Nitish Kumar Reddy had a memorable outing with the bat in India's first innings of the Boxing Day Test match against Australia and he scored a match-saving 114 off 189 balls. India lost the key wickets of Rishabh Pant and Ravindra Jadeja in the first session of the third day and the pressure was on all-rounders.Nitish and Washington Sundar showed their class with the bat and added 127 runs for the 8th wicket to take India to a total of 369. Social media was flooded with wishes for Nitish as he breached the three-figure mark.A special wish also came from Hardik Pandya, who took to X to react to his century. Pandya shared a heartfelt message for the all-rounder and wrote: "Heart, courage and to do it in front of your family is special. Remarkable talent, with a bright future ahead of him my best wishes always."

Nitish is Hardik's replacement in Test cricket in the long run. Hardik made his Test debut in 2017 and played his last red-ball game for India on the England tour in 2018.Hardik did make his comeback in the Test team in the 2020/21 season but didn't play. He quit playing first-class cricket due to his back issues. He hasn't played a red-ball game at any level since December 2018.India tried out Shardul Thakur in Hardik's absence but he isn't part of Team India now. Nitish pipped Shardul for a place in the squad for the Australia tour and has now cemented his spot.The right-handed batsman has scored consistently in the ongoing series. He has scores of 41, 38*, 42, 42, 16 and 114 in Australia. He has scalped 3 wickets. Talking of the game, Australia hold a lead of more than 150 runs. They could declare their innings in the final session of the play.