Sledging at its Best - Harshit Rana vs Michell Starc..

India came to Australia after a series of whitewash at home vs New Zealand. It's a rare feat for New Zealand, they turned many heads winning the context after getting whitewashed by Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

India had to face more obstacles as one of their key pacers, Mohommad Shami was injured and not fit for First few test matches of 5-match Border - Gawaskar Trophy. Talking about batting, Key players like Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and KL Rahul was not in form.

So, it's a big chance for new players to shine on big stage. So Nitish Kumar Reddy from SRH, Devdat Padikkal from RR and Harshit Rana from KKR got the chance to represent India for the first time. And KL Rahul was promoted for opening position as Rishab Pant is keeping behind the wicket. With Duruv Jurel in the team, there are 3 wicket-keeping batters in the team.

Even though there were like 9 players that can bat, India was able to just make 150 in the first innings. Debuter Nitish Kumar was the highest scorer and he made some valuable runs with tailenders to reach 150 mark.

At that moment, even we thought that India is gonna loose this in style. But that hope was only there for a moment. Australia lost 7 wickets in no time when the 1st came to an end. Then in the next day, Australia hanged in their last wicket with Michell Starc and Josh Hazelwood on the crease.

Harshit Rana and Jasprit Bumrah bowled a long spell trying to get the last wicket. As we all know, Harshit Rana and Michell Starc were on KKR in last season of IPL. Rana learnt a lot from Starc and now he's in Starc's territory threatening him from the bowl.

While Rana was bowling to Starc, one ball was hit on the thumb of Starc. And then some banter took place between the players :

Starc - "I bowl faster than you Harshit. And I have a long memory."
Rana just smiled and left without caring about it.

Just after a few overs, Rana hit Strac on the head and that made Starc furious. And we all know how Starc coop with these situations.

Starc - You have to bat again.
Rana - No. I won't.
Starc - Even. Even.

It's so fun to see these events, visitors challenging hosts in a great way. Not only Harshit, Yasasvi Jaiswal also said that Mitchell Starc's bowling is too slow. That's how bold they've become with the advantage of their skill set.

At the end, Harshit Rana took the wicket of Starc to wrap up the Australian innings for 104. I was great how Australia got the return from their pitches by the Indian pacers. In the end, they had to pay the price by losing the match by 295 runs. There's a long break between the first and the second test but anyway, we have enough action at test cricket right now..