Lunch India 64 for 1 (Rahul 31*, Pujara 22*) trail Australia 300 by 236 runs
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KL Rahul played out the morning session, ending on 31 not out off 75 © Associated Press
India’s top order withstood fiery new ball spells from Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins to put the hosts in a steady position in reply to Australia’s first-innings 300 at lunch on day two 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 Cheteshwar Pujara managed to avoid dismissal, meaning India had lost only M Vijay while negotiating the new ball.
Hazlewood bowled a severely testing spell in particular, operating unchanged for the first hour of play and posing plenty of questions with bounce and 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 at first slip – the sort of chance the Australians would have expected to take.
There was less on offer for Nathan Lyon’s offbreaks, while Steve O’Keefe’s left-arm spin was not required until the penultimate over of the session. Having changed the Ranchi Test with his double-century, Pujara once again seemed to be setting himself for a long innings of deep concentration.
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 the Australians with their first wicket. The next over Cummins bent his back to find the edge from Rahul, the ball flying at such pace that Renshaw was unable to close his fingers around the chance.
There were more good deliveries to follow and scoring was slow, but Pujara and Rahul were happy to reach the break without further loss on a day when batting should get easier with every successive over played out against a bowling attack unchanged from their interminable stint in the field in the third Test.
Daniel Brettig is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. @danbrettig
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo