On 18th March 2013, India completed an easy win over Australia at Mohali and took a 3-0 lead and along with that the series. It was one of the most dominant performances by the Indian team in the test matches between these two teams. Both the teams were going through a transition as legends like Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Ricky Ponting, and Michael Hussey retired during last one year prior to that series.
India won the first test at Chennai thanks to a double century from the Captain MS Dhoni. In the second test at Hyderabad India’s win was driven by a 370 runs partnership between Murali Vijay and Cheteshwar Pujara with the later scoring a double hundred. Although India was playing well Virender Sehwag was not in a good form and was dropped from the squad before the third test. Since no replacement was announced it meant the third opener in the side Shikhar Dhawan had a great chance to finally make his test debut.
Dhawan came to focus in 2004 when as an 18-year old he scored 505 runs in the Under-19 world cup in Bangladesh. It is still a tournament record. However, despite some good performance in the domestic cricket for Delhi Dhawan’s case was of the right person at the wrong time and place. At that time, Delhi boasted of having the India openers Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir as their state opener also. The other option of the opener for the ODI team was none other than Sachin Tendulkar. Finally, Dhawan got his chance in ODI’s in 2010 and played few ODI’s and T20 in 2010-11 with not much spectacular performance.
The Mohali test was also remembered for the ‘Homeworkgate’ saga when Shane Watson, Mitchell Johnson, Usman Khawaja, and James Pattinson were dropped for not completing an assignment set by the coach and other disciplinary issues. The day one was washed out and Australia scored 408 batting on day two and part of day three. Coming to open on his debut test, Dhawan played a memorable inning, full of shots in both sides of the wicket. He reached his century in 85 balls, the fastest debut century ever and raced to 185 by end of the third day with India 256 for no loss. Fans hoped for Dhawan to continue and become the first Indian to score a double century on debut. But next morning he was gone in the second over after scoring 187. Australia did not score much as three Indian spinners Ashwin, Jadeja, and Ojha took seven wickets among them. Dhawan was injured while fielding and could not bat in India’s chase which they completed with the loss of four wickets. He played his next test after eight months.
India had another dominant performance in Delhi to whitewash Australia 4-0.
