To say that so much happened would be an understatement. Rather it felt like two days of cricket crammed into one.
When the day began, Australia were in a position to shut India out of the game. And for a time, they appeared to be well on their way to doing so. Then came 29 minutes of mayhem in which Australia lost six wickets in 35 balls for the addition of only 11 runs.
Umesh Yadav, one of the more underrated cricketers in the Indian system, engineered the collapse. Reverse-swinging the ball beautifully, he had the Cameron Green trapped in front by a ball that shaped towards pad and straightened after pitching.
Going around the wickets, Umesh then flattened Mitchell Starc’s off stump to pick up his 100th wicket at home. Todd Murphy suffered a similar fate as Yadav ended with 5-0-12-3.
In all, 13 Indians have over 100 Test wickets at home, and Umesh has taken the fewest balls to get there, 4,652, to be precise. Since 2018, Umesh has 50 home wickets from 23 innings at an average of 15.32 — better than Mohammad Shami, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja in the same time frame.
Umesh’s injection of urgency meant that Australia ended with 197, far fewer than they would have liked. But even if the momentum was with India going into their second innings they were far behind the game, trailing by 88, thanks to their first-innings implosion.It wasn’t going to be easy, but there was a glimmer of hope for India: if they upped their game they could set Australia a target that would be challenging on this surface.
But, the innings began and ended in identical fashion. Shubman Gill ran down the pitch to Nathan Lyon and was comprehensively beaten and bowled. India’s 10th wicket would be Mohammad Siraj, who also wanted to be a hero, but only ended up giving Lyon figures of 8 for 64, throwing away his wicket while Axar Patel was still at the other end.
But, in between these two acts of generosity, was the real meat of the Indian innings. Lyon set the template, bowling around the stumps and getting the ball to straighten to the right-hand batsmen, and Rohit Sharma fell, playing the flick and missing.
Virat Kohli, who had shown so much promise with his approach in the first innings, made the rookie mistake of going back and trying to pull a ball that was on t he stumps from Matt Kuhnemann. The ball kept low and the umpire had no hesitation in raising his finger.
Jadeja came and went. For a time Cheteshwar Pujara and Shreyas Iyer played with purpose. Pujara dug deep in his mental reserves and muscle memory kicked in. It has been a lean three years for Pujara, but something about Australia and big occasion gets his juices flowing. Pujara kept Lyon at bay, blunting the offie, allowing Shreyas to play his shots. Shreyas clattered two sixes and three fours in his 26 nudging Steve Smith to fall back to the pace of Starc. Shreyas flicked well, but Usman Khawaja was at hand at midwicket, superman without his cape, diving to his left to pull off a stunner.
There was still the lower order to come, and hope floated, but this was extinguished when Smith out-did Khawaja, pouncing on an edge from Pujara at leg slip, going to his right and low, at lightning speed to hold onto a one-handed screamer. Pujara’s 142-ball 59 had pulled India up to 163, but they will go to bed knowing that they probably had not done enough.
When the third day’s play begins, Australia will need 76. The good thing is, there’s nothing to lose — other than a Test match, of course. India just have to give it their all, and pray that Australia panic.
BRIEF SCORES
INDIA 109 and 163 (Pujara 59; Lyon 8/64) lead
AUSTRALIA 197 (Khawaja 60; Jadeja 4/78, Umesh 3/12, Ashwin 3/44) by 75 runs
For all the latest Sports News Click Here
