south africa defeated australia by 5 wickets to win the World Test championship 2025 title. This is the second time in cricket history that south africa has won an ICC trophy. In the final match, south africa got a target of 282 runs, which it achieved on the fourth day of the Test. australia was playing this final match as the defending champion, but failed to defend its title. After all, what were the 3 reasons due to which australia could not win the WTC trophy for the second consecutive time.
1. Batting collapsed in the second innings
In this final match played at Lord's ground, australia scored 212 runs in the first innings. At the same time, the bowlers had taken a lead of 74 runs by wrapping up South Africa's first innings for 138 runs. There were full 3 days left in the match, australia had a chance to bat well and set a target of at least 350 in front of South Africa. But in the second innings, Australia's batting flopped, as a result, it lost 7 wickets for 73 runs. It was thanks to alex Carey (43 runs) and Mitchell Starc (58 runs) that the team was able to score 207 runs. If Steve Smith, Marnus Labuschagne and other batsmen had scored a few runs, australia could have set a target of 400 runs for South Africa.
2. Nathan Lyon was given short spells
The final match was dominated by fast bowlers, but by the third day the ball had started spinning too much. For south africa, Aiden Markram and Temba Bavuma were set on the third day, while Nathan Lyon's ball was spinning several degrees. Despite this, the Australian captain gave short spells to Lyon. Especially in the last overs of the third day, Markram and Bavuma were playing very slowly, so if tight fielding had been set on Nathan Lyon's spin balls, then perhaps the Australian team could have created pressure by taking wickets.
3. Wrong playing XI selection
The Australian team included cameron Green as a batsman in the playing XI, due to which he batted at number-3. For this reason, Marnus Labuschagne was made to open. The result was that Labuschagne could score only 39 runs in both the innings, while Green could score only four runs in 2 innings. A better playing XI selection could have been that Labuschagne was allowed to bat at number-3 as usual, while the responsibility of opening was given to sam Constas. Constas had earlier performed impressively against india in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy..jpg)
click and follow Indiaherald WhatsApp channel