With his six-wicket haul against Bangladesh on the third day of the first Test at Darwin, Australia pacer Josh Hazlewood also crossed the 300 Test-wicket milestone in his career. As Hazlewood picked up his fifth wicket of the Bangladesh’s first innings in the form of Mehidy Hasan, the 35-year-old pacer became the ninth Australian bowler to have taken 300 wickets for more.
His average of 24.04 is only behind Glenn McGrath (21.64), Pat Cummins (22.21) and Dennis Lillee (23.92) in that list of nine Australian bowlers. After the Bangladesh innings, Hazelwood spoke about what the historic milestone means for him.
“You don’t really think about those sorts of milestones when you’re playing. I guess it’s probably something you look back on at the end. But I guess just to see the other names there, and I’m playing with three of them, so yeah, it’s pretty cool,” shared Hazlewood while speaking with Kayo Sports.
Hazlewood, who made his Test debut against India in 2014, had made a stellar start to his career with his tally of 51 and 42 wickets in Tests in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Over the last ten years, Hazelwood has picked up 199 more Test wickets.
He has only played in six of Australia’s last 14 Test matches and no Test in the last 12 months as he battled back injuries. Coming to the Test, Hazlewood was in contention along with Scott Boland. Saturday’s six-wicket haul was also the pacer’s first five wicket-haul in nine years. Bangladesh posted a total of 426 runs in their first innings having built up a lead of 228 runs before Australia went to bat in their second innings.
The Aussie pacer spoke about how Bangladesh batters hung in there ‘tough’. “They hung in there tough. Yeah, it’s pretty hard work out there on that track. We probably stuck it out, we didn’t let the runs flow too quickly there at the end. It was just that Bangladesh hung in there nice and tough, and it was tough to get wickets out there, so it was a good effort,” Hazlewood said.
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