Nice to get a few wickets: Doherty

Xavier Doherty’s inclusion in place of Nathan Lyon had been widely criticised in the Australian media but the left-arm spinner breathed a sigh of relief after taking three wickets on the third day of the second Test. Excerpts:

On thoughts of not getting a wicket: It was starting to look that way. Particularly with that close LB (Cheteshwar Pujara) which I thought was pretty good. Things just didn't seem to be going my way. I was trying to work out my Test bowling average there at one stage because I came into the game at a hundred (three wickets at 102.00 in two matches). In the last five or six overs, it was just more pleasing how the ball started to come out. It did take a while for it to take a bit of rhythm. To get a couple of wickets was nice as well.

 On Australia’s effort on the day: We came in today knowing we were up against it and we needed to put in a better day than yesterday to eventually knock them over. Today we took nine for 190 or something like that (9-192), which was a pleasing effort.  But the damage was done yesterday so there's still a lot of work for us to do to get ourselves back into the game.

On the hard task of bowling in India: We knew it was going to be hard. They’re very good players of spin. Warnie (Shane Warne) came down and spoke to the spinning group post the first Test and he said he averaged 45 over here, Murali (Muttiah Muralitharan) averaged 47 or something like that – they were the numbers he threw out, I’m not sure if they’re accurate but that’s what he said. So, some of the best bowlers in the world do battle over here. We knew it was going to be tough but it’s just about grinding away.