India will look back at the fourth day of the Boxing Day Test and think they fared well, for they’ve managed to give themselves an outside chance of winning in Melbourne despite conceding a 105-run lead. The assessment would be bittersweet though, simultaneously highlighting the errors which if not made would’ve accorded India a real shot at victory. The three catches dropped by Yashavi Jaiswal twisted the knife on the visitors in an innings featuring a rocky marriage between bowling labour and its fruit.
Going into the second half of the match the general consensus was that the pitch will morph into a featherbed, after all India and Australia had tallied 843 runs in the first innings. Jasprit Bumrah jokingly told Pat Cummins that by greenlighting this track he’d extended a Christmas present to the batters and KL Rahul asked Justin Langer whether the ball would spin, alluding to the dissipating grass cover. Yet, contrary to popular belief, there was an abundance of lateral movement on offer in the morning session as Australia recorded a false shot percentage of 36, the second highest for overs 1-20 since 2006 in Tests Down Under.
Usman Khawaja couldn’t put bat to ball, his front-on stance and Bumrah’s pronounced away-seamers at a deadlock as he refused to feel for the ball. There were 22 plays and misses in the first 128 deliveries but all India could elicit was shoulder shrugs and wry smiles from the ageing left-hander. To put the luck factor into perspective, during India’s nosedive to 36 in 21.2 overs the edge was found frequently, with the number of plays-and-misses down to 7.
To ensure that Khawaja is not able to get off strike easily when the pacers came tighter at the stumps in pursuit of the nick, India stationed two close-in catchers on the leg side, not exactly for the full-blooded flick but a ricochet from the inside of the willow as the opener’s minimal feet movement takes his bat a long way in front of the body. Hence, Jaiswal can be cut some slack for his drop in the third over, but the ball kept following him as the next two reprieves – Marnus Labuschagne on 46 and Pat Cummins on 21 – cost India a great deal. Australia went from 91-6 to 228-9 and stretched their lead to 333, 102 more than the highest successful chase at the MCG in this century. Having added an unbeaten 55 off 110 balls for the last wicket, Nathan Lyon and Scott Boland are poised to help Australia set an even cushioned target on the morrow.
The jammy escape of Lyon against the second new ball was a microcosm of how this game of fine margins turned its back to the hard-working Indian attack. He squirted an edge to KL Rahul who used all his limbs to freakishly hold onto what was a regulation catch only to learn that Bumrah had overstepped for the second time in the over that began with a full-toss. It was a case of the golden goose over-exerting itself to topple the remaining domino after having sent down 52 overs in the match to return 8/155. ‘’Bas ab, nahi lag raha zor’’, he informed Rohit of his depleting energy levels when asked to have a go at the tail-enders. Much to India’s joy, he’d reserved the rapacious intensity for spells that mattered the most, notably the three-over burst in the afternoon where he scythed through the Australian middle-order.
India’s bowling unit, by Bumrah’s own admission, is undergoing a period of transition, rendering him a lone ranger on occasions. Especially when Mohammed Siraj misfires, which has been a concern for India in this series as even though he has 16 wickets to his name his economy rate flirts with 4, the worst among frontline pacers on both sides. Moreover, his average read an alarming 33.3 over the first seven innings of this series. An all-round bowling effort in the second dig was imperative if India harbored any aspirations of a comeback, and thankfully for the visitors there were no loopholes in the barrel.
Steve Smith, fresh off a hundred, managed only a single boundary in his 41-ball stay. The desperation to get a move on was evident in his call for a risky run and two uppish drives post Lunch, with the stagnancy eventually proving too bothersome for the man in form as he chased a wide tempter from Siraj. Bumrah’s wingman in the absence of Mohammed Shami, Siraj delivered four maidens in his dozen overs initially, with the Khawaja knock-over supplying him the confidence he badly needed after leaking 122 runs at a rate of 5.30 in 23 unproductive overs in the first essay.
Siraj’s profligacy was most probably the reason why Akash Deep shared the new ball with Bumrah on the fourth morning, and he made a good fist of things, extracting bounce while seaming the ball away from right handers after hammering it in the corridor of uncertainty. Labuschagne’s near-fatal steer to gully on the verge of fifty came off his bowling and luck continued to elude Akash Deep as a defensive stroke missed the leg bail, drawing shrieks of agony from the cordon.
Variable bounce made its presence felt as Akash Deep saw a couple of edges die down, urging second slip to grab a lid and budge towards the batter. His well-directed bouncer got big on Sam Konstas and Boland nearly fell prey to his reverse swing. Akash Deep has, in fact, produced more false shots than any bowler on this tour even if the wickets chart belies that statistic.
Labuschagne revealed that Australia planned to pile on the runs and declare to have a crack at India before Stumps. However, with the Indian pacers showing terrific control and artistry, the hosts had to recalibrate their strategy.
“We obviously had the perfect outcome for us, and that probably looked like having a bowl tonight and putting them under pressure,” he noted. “But you know, the way the wicket played and the way India bowled and came out and put us under pressure in that first 40 to 50 overs, that wasn’t an option for us.
“It became, ‘let’s get as many runs as we can’, and that’s obviously creeping into a nice total now, but you know, there was a time there where it could have been, 250, 270, maybe even less there for a bit. So I think we navigated that really well, and the lower order deserve a lot of credit for how they managed that last part.”
Matches heading into the fifth day are an aberration in today’s day and age of Test cricket on steroids. That too, with all three results possible. Those who rolled in their graves when an advancing Konstas tried to swank Bumrah over mid-wicket in the first over itself can rest easy now.
