Tea India 153 for 2 (Rahul 60, Pujara 53*, Rahane 19*) trail Australia 300 by 147 runs
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KL Rahul was made to work for his 60, before he was bounced out © Associated Press
Cheteshwar Pujara was again Australia’s stumbling block as India’s top order made steady progress towards the tourists’ first-innings total on the second afternoon of the decisive fourth Test in Dharamsala.
The pitch offered more assistance to the touring pacemen than at any other time in the series, while Dharamsala’s altitude helped the ball to keep swinging more or less all morning. However, KL Rahul and Pujara managed to endure for long periods, meaning India lost only one wicket in each of the first two sessions.
Having changed the Ranchi Test with his double-century, Pujara once again seemed to be setting himself for a long innings of deep concentration. He chose his scoring avenues carefully, and pulled back his scoring rate in the company of the stand-in captain Ajinkya Rahane after Rahul’s exit midway through the afternoon.
Hazlewood bowled a severely testing spell, operating unchanged for the first hour of play and posing plenty of questions with bounce, seam and swing. Cummins’ best was similarly challenging, and he produced one delivery that caught the edge of Rahul’s bat and burst through the fingertips of Matt Renshaw – the sort of chance Australia would have expected to take. After lunch, Cummins defeated Rahul with a short ball amidst a spicy spell.
Hazlewood came exceptionally close to a wicket with his second ball of the day, as Vijay’s checked drive fell fractionally short of David Warner at mid-off. It was not a moment representative of the rest of the morning, as the ball flew through to Matthew Wade with more venom that at any other time over these four Tests.
Amid the occasional verbal barb from bowler to batsman, Vijay edged Hazlewood just short of Wade, before touching another delivery behind that carried rather more comfortably to present Australia with their first wicket.
There were more good deliveries to follow and scoring was slow, but Pujara and Rahul were happy to reach the break without further loss. They accelerated notably on resumption, threatening momentarily to take the game well away from the Australian side.
Cummins was recalled to the attack to try to make something happen, and he obliged by getting at Rahul with a combination of short balls and verbal rejoinders. Eventually, Rahul was coaxed into trying a hook shot at a bouncer pitched well outside off stump, and the resulting toe-end miscue lobbed gently to an exultant David Warner.
Runs became harder to come by after an initial burst from Rahane, as Nathan Lyon and Steve O’Keefe concentrated on economy. But only one chance of any sort was generated – an lbw appeal by Lyon against Rahane that was turned down by the umpire Ian Gould and not reviewed. Ball-tracking showed the delivery would have gone on to strike the top of leg stump but remained umpire’s call.
Daniel Brettig is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. @danbrettig
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo