A lot of eyes were recently on Test cricket again. The Border-Gavaskar Trophy was going on with India and Australia and the Sri Lanka in New Zealand series was about to start around when the BGT was going to end. These two series were rather important, as the WTC final spots were still up in the air. Australia had quite a notable lead on second-place India, but a 4-0 BGT series sweep by India would’ve seen a flip-flop of the position standings. Additionally, Sri Lanka was the last team still in contention for a top-2 spot, which would’ve been easily achieved as long as they won both their games against NZ AND one of the following results happened in the BGT: 4-0 sweep by either India or Australia, a series draw, or an Australia series win.

At the time of writing, the BGT series is almost over with Day 5 about to start. Virat Kohli did hit a magnificent 186, his first Test century since 2019! The fourth Test saw Australia scoring 480 in the first innings and at 33/1 in the second innings, while India got to 571. Sri Lanka-New Zealand is looking like it will go down to the wire! It’s gearing up to be either a draw or a last-minute win for one side (Indian fans will be hoping for NZ to pull through)!

This was part of the discussion on the State of Cricket podcast, episode 133. Other aspects included how the Indian batters (Kohli, Srikar Bharat, Shubman Gill) tackled the two Aussie off-spinners (Nathan Lyon and Todd Murphy), which one spinner should be picked for the WTC final if India makes it (Ravindra Jadeja vs. Ravichandran Ashwin), Lokesh Rahul potentially coming back into the middle order, potential India 15-man rosters, Jaydev Unadkat vs. Umesh Yadav, and predictions of how Day 5 will actually turn out in the BGT.

If you are interested in the rest of the conversation, please check out the links below: