Plan to dominate Nathan Lyon faltered: Mayank Agarwal

Having scored 304 runs on Day 1, India are in a decent position in the fourth and final Test against Australia at Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG). Mayank Agarwal turned out to be the second-highest scorer of the day with 77 runs from 112 balls. His knock was also laced with seven boundaries and a couple of sixes. Even on his debut at the MCG, Mayank didn’t look bothered a scored a half-century in the first innings.

At SCG, he was all set to score his maiden Test century, but he got out to a rash stroke of spinner Nathan Lyon in the 34th over during the post-lunch session. The 27-year-old Karnataka batsman tried to go downtown with all his might, however, holed out to Mitchell Starc at long on.

Quite expectantly, he was dejected after gifting his wicket away when he was going great guns. “I’m quite disappointed for missing out on a big score. I was unhappy with the way I threw my wicket away. It’s a learning curve and if don’t make this mistake again, it will be a good lesson,” Mayank was quoted as saying in the post-day press conference in Sydney.

We decided to play close to the body

Agarwal was pretty severe on Lyon. In the first ball of the 32nd over, Agarwal danced down the track and deposited Lyon over long on. In the fourth ball of the 35th over, he smacked the tweaker for another colossal blow. Two balls later, Agarwal perished, trying to go areal. Talking about his plans against Lyon, Agarwal said: “That’s something I was looking to do, dominate him and it didn’t work out.”

He also talked about his 116-run stand with Cheteshwar Pujara, who scored his third century of the series. “The plan was always to knit a small partnership after each wicket that’s what we said to each other that is to build a stand. The Aussies were bowling really well and we decided to play close to the body and not give them wickets even if we weren’t getting too many runs,” he added.

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