“Glimpse of Daniel Vettori”- Twitter reacts as debutant Todd Murphy outbowls master Nathan Lyon
Murphy joined the likes of Scott Boland, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins, and Nathan Lyon on the list of Australian bowlers to scalp five wickets on debut, becoming the 35th Aussie bowler to take a fifer on maiden Test match.
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Todd Murphy
Todd Murphy, even though he could make less impact when it comes to India’s batting, outclassed the Australian bowlers in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy series in Nagpur. On his debut Test, he sent seven Indian batsmen into packing for 124 runs.
He played his last first-class match eleven months ago, and surprisingly, he wasn’t in the reckoning for the first Test at all. But many in Victoria, his home team in domestic cricket, claimed that “Goggles”- Murphy is affectionately called by this name- has good records against right-handers. Murphy’s first five wickets were the right-handed batsmen.
First, he knocked out KL Rahul and nightwatchman Ravichandran Ashwin, then surprised Chestershwar Pujara and Virat Kohli with the worst deliveries. Kohli has bad records in the subcontinent against the spinner, notwithstanding that, Murphy got his reward due to his building pressure with consistency. India’s debutant wicketkeeper KS Bharat fell prey to Murphy to become his fifth victim.
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Check how Twitter reacted to Todd Murphy’s seven-wicket haul
Murphy became the second spinner, since Nathan Lyon, to scalp a fifer on debut. Lyon did it on August 31 in 2011 against Sri Lanka. In this match, Lyon could scalp just one wicket. Murphy’s excellent control of length and line was the reason why he was chosen ahead of Mitchell Swepson and Ashton Agar.
“It’s been a pretty special couple of days and to top it off with a five-wicket haul on debut is more than I ever hoped for,” Murphy said after play on the second day of Test.
In the first session on Day 3, Murphy scalped two more wickets, of Ravindra Jadeja (70) and Mohammed Shami (37). Shami was proving dangerous with the bat, all due to his going for biggies. He smashed three sixes and two boundaries and astonishingly, he has more sixes in Test cricket than Virat Kohli. Murphy trapped Shami to complete his seven wickets.
Murphy joined the likes of Scott Boland, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins, and Nathan Lyon on the list of Australian bowlers to scalp five wickets on debut, becoming the 35th Aussie bowler to take a fifer on maiden Test match. He also became the youngest Aussie spinner to scalp the fifer since 1882. Only Jason Krejza has better records than Murphy on Test debut. Krejza scalped eights wickets for 215 runs back in 2008.
On Day 3, India reached 400 owing to the two all-rounders, Ravindra Jadeja, and Axar Patel‘s half-century knocks and Mohammed Shami‘s quickfire. Australia are now trailing behind 223 runs at the time of writing this article.
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Gouri Das
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