India-Australia Youth Test: Anmoljeet Singh helps India sweep series

Debutant off-spinner Anmoljeet Singh and leg-spinner Mohamed Enaan picked 16 out of 20 Australian wickets as India U-19 comfortably won by an innings and 120 runs in the second Youth Test to complete a 2-0 series sweep here on Wednesday.

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Australia U-19 lost as many as 17 wickets on the third day after commencing on their overnight score of 142/3 in reply to India’s massive first-innings total of 492.

The visitors were all out for 277 in their first essay with skipper Oliver Peake (117 off 143 balls) and wicketkeeper Alex Lee Young (66) adding 166 for the fourth wicket. After Young was dismissed, the last six wickets fell for 59 runs. Kerala boy Enaan (4/60 in 22.2 overs), who had once attended Saqlain Mushtaq’s clinic in Dubai, and Ludhiana’s Anmoljeet (4/72 in 24 overs), who hero worships Harbhajan Singh, were the wreckers-in-chief.

In four-day cricket, the follow-on can be enforced if the team batting second is trailing by more than 150 runs. After being forced to follow-on, Australia were skittled out for 95 in 31.3 overs. Anmoljeet, who had taken an astounding 65 wickets in the Vijay Merchant Trophy (U-16) in the 2023 season, came back to get 5/32 in 13.3 overs.

Eight Australian players failed to reach double-digit scores and four of them didn’t bother to trouble the scorers. While Anmoljeet had match figures of 9/104, Enaan wasn’t far behind with 7/97.

Brief scores: India U19: 492 all out in 133.3 overs (Pangalia 117, Pandya 94, Karthikeya 71, Patwardhan 63, Nikhil 61; Hoekstra 2/41, Howe 2/43); Australia U19: 277 all out in 80.2 overs (Peake 117, Young 66; Enaan 4/60, Anmoljeet 4/72) & 95 all out in 31.3 overs (Anmoljeet 5/32, Enaan 3/37).