Harbhajan Singh feels teams need to be stronger for keeping Test cricket alive

The second Ashes Test between England and Australia at the Lord’s Cricket Ground turned out to be a closely-fought one. The game went right down to the wire despite rain playing spoilsport for a significant amount of time. Even at the start of Day five, a result was possible, but the start was delayed due to adverse weather conditions. Thereafter, Ben Stokes entertained with a century.

The southpaw’s knock helped the Three Lions set a target of 267 for the Aussies to chase down in the fag end of the encounter. It was presumed that the visiting team would be able to play out the remaining overs to save themselves from a defeat at the Home of Cricket in London. However, the English bowlers had other ideas and they kept making frequent inroads into the batting.

A thrilling Day five in the second Ashes Test

Jofra Archer got rid of David Warner and Usman Khawaja to set the cat amongst the pigeons in the opposition camp. Then it was the turn of Jack Leach to extract a significant amount of turn from the rough. The left-arm spinner got rid of Cameron Bancroft, Marnus Labuschagne and Matthew Wade to keep the hosts in the game. Archer removed Australian skipper Tim Paine with a bouncer.

Labuschagne came in as a concussion substitute of Steve Smith, who was ruled out of the rest of the encounter after being hit by a bouncer from Archer. In the end, it was all up to Travis Head and Pat Cummins to survive the last seven overs, which they eventually did. The last few overs of the game were played under the floodlights with even Joe Denly rolling his arms over.

In the meantime, Sourav Ganguly, the former Indian cricketer, feels that the Ashes has managed to keep Test cricket alive and it’s now time for the rest of the sides to step up and contribute. The southpaw took to Twitter and wrote, “The” Ashes “ series have kept test cricket alive …. upto rest of the world to raise their standards,”

Here is Ganguly’s tweet

The” Ashes “ series have kept test cricket alive …. upto rest of the world to raise their standards

— Sourav Ganguly (@SGanguly99) August 18, 2019

But Harbhajan Singh feels that apart from Australia, England, India and New Zealand at home, no other team has the firepower to keep up the standards of Test cricket. He replied to Ganguly’s tweet and wrote, “Standards can only be maintained if teams r strong but sadly apart from India australia England and May be NZ in NZ are the only strong team left in world cricket,”

Here is Harbhajan’s reply

Standards can only be maintained if teams r strong but sadly apart from India australia England and May be NZ in NZ are the only strong team left in world cricket https://t.co/mF2ZJAYzSC

— Harbhajan Turbanator (@harbhajan_singh) August 19, 2019