The fourth Test match between Australia and England in the ongoing Ashes series at the MCG ended in a tame draw!
Joe Root who celebrated his 27th birthday today picked up the wicket of David Warner. Australian captain Steven Smith scored yet another hundred which helped Australia push for a Draw.
The Draw in this fourth Test implies that Steven Smith has missed a very rare opportunity to whitewash England in a 5 match Test series. I have collected some of the stats from the final day’s play:
86 – David Warner fell 14 runs short of century in the 2nd innings after scoring a brilliant 103 in the first innings! He could have became the only batsmen in the Test history to hit 2 centuries in the same Test match on 4 occasions! Sunil Gavaskar and Ricky Ponting are the other players to have hit 100 in each innings on 3 different occasions!
| First Innings | Second Innings | Against | Venue | Year |
| 135 | 145 | South Africa | Cape Town | 2014 |
| 145 | 102 | India | Adelaide | 2014 |
| 163 | 116 | New Zealand | Brisbane | 2015 |
161 – Deliveries faced by David Warner to get to his Fifty in the second innings of the MCG Test! This is the slowest Fifty for Warner in this longest format of the game!
49 – Innings taken by Steven Smith to complete 3000 runs in Test cricket at Home. Javed Miandad of Pakistan too too same number of innings to reach this milestone! Only Don Bradman (in 37 innings) reached there in fewer innings.
1258 – Deliveries faced by Aussie captain Steven Smith in the ongoing series, the most deliveries faced by him in a single series. His 1135 deliveries against India in the 2014 -15 season are the second best for him in a series now!
Whitewash? BITCH PLEASE! #Ashes pic.twitter.com/VhI3OEw8Uz
— Cric Stat (@Cric_Stat) December 30, 2017
2 – Second instance for Joe Root picking up the wicket of an opener in Tests. Got the wicket of David Warner in the second innings. The only other instance was against India in Southampton in 2014 when he picked up the wicket of Shikhar Dhawan.
13 – After forcing results in the last 13 consecutive Test matches, Australia and England finally settled for a Draw in an Ashes Test. The last drawn Test match between these two nations was at The Oval in August 2013!
Alastair Cook and Stuart Board whose place in the playing XI was hanging by a thread before this Test match have cemented their places with some brilliant performances. However, Moeen Ali is still struggling and is not on the verge of getting dropped!
Jackson Bird who has replaced the injured Mitchell Starc in this Boxing Day Test was not successful and conceded over 100 runs in the only innings he bowled! Ashton Agar who has been added to the squad for the SCG Test will replace Bird if Starc didn’t recover in time for the fifth and final Test match!
