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Australia v India Test 2017: Visitors hit the buffers

Greg Baum

India 0/19, need 87 runs to win

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India hits back on day three

Australia ended India's innings at 332, after Ravindra Jadeja gave India a nice injection of runs before falling for 63, but the Aussies were far from being on easy street as Australia was all out for 137, leaving India chasing 87 for the win.

The impossible Australia did immediately, but the miracle is going to have to wait at least another couple of years.

Australia took India by surprise — shock, really — in Pune, but ever since, India have been wresting back control of the series, bit by hard-won bit. On Monday in Dharamsala, they wore through the last of Australia's mesh of resistance. Suddenly, the gallant visitors could not hide their brittleness. Most acutely, they had only one fit, established and in-form batsman in their top order. At last, with a pull shot played into his stumps, the straw that broke Steve Smith's back alighted, and once he was gone, almost for the first time in the series, what followed had about it a sense of the inevitable. The cheerleaders/commentators tried, but by the last session could not even convince themselves that another quick 100 here and five wickets there and Australia were back in it.

But credit where it is due to India. For this deciding Test at a previously unused venue, they might have settled for tried and true, especially in the absence of captain Virat Kohli, except as the sort of ghost figure that once was seen on televisions with bad reception. Instead, they shortened their batting to field three spinners, and all three as well as both seamers played telling roles. Fortune favoured, if not the bold, the bowlers. India will win this series despite losing three of four tosses, supposedly life and death on the sub-continent. Evidently, they are well-versed in reincarnation.

The texture of this absorbing series owes a little to the legend of the late Sydney journalist and boxing promoter Bill "Break Even" Mordey. One explanation for his nickname was that he would invariably declare at the end of a day at the races, for instance, that he had broken even, making no mention of the many thousands of dollars he had been ahead and behind during the course. So also in the Border/Gavaskar series, there were wild fluctuations, but always near balance on the bottom line, until now.

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Simply, Australia had their worst day of the rubber. It began with poor Matt Renshaw's dropped catch at slip the previous evening. Between two teams so evenly and keenly matched with bat and ball, it was regularly declared that this or that among the peripherals, sundries and happenstance would prove series-breaking. This one was.That is not to damn Renshaw in isolation. Rather, it is to remember that he and several mates had not previously played such a long, searching and intensive stretch of cricket, and it was bound to tell on their collective sangfroid at some stage.

Ravindra Jadeja and Wriddhiman Saha put on 96 to bat India into the lead. Pat Cummins, in particular, tested their mettle in ways that are supposed to be beyond the wherewithal of fast bowlers in India. Wicketkeeper Matt Wade's cheeks puffed out involuntarily each time he took Cummins, so hard was he hitting the gloves. Here is another of this series' many counter-intuitive dynamics: fast bowlers have taken a third of the wickets. How quickly and fatefully would the day return to this theme.

Cummins put the wind up Jadeja, but he did not recoil. He has proved a redoubtable opponent, Harbhajan Singh deluxe. In the manner of Test cricket, India's innings proceeded patiently and meticulously, then finished in a flurry of boundaries, wickets, warnings, ambitious referrals and words that were both sharp and blunt. They were symptoms; Australia, having momentarily taken a grip on the game, had lost it.

The next cut was the unkindest, and effectively the last. Suddenly, the pitch was full of shaitans and sundry other bad djinns, and on it, Umesh Yadav and Bhuvneshwar Kumar sheared off Australia's top order. So much for the shibboleth and about fast bowling being a waste of time and effort in India. When last seen in Australia two years ago, this pair were being slapped around at 10 an over in Sydney at the end of another fruitless overseas trip for India, but now they were unrecognisable. David Warner poked at Yadav as he might fend off a rearing cobra, at arm's length. So did Renshaw. Kumar was hit for fours left and right by Smith, but went right back at him on fourth stump line and had his reward next ball.

Australia was three out and not yet in front. Their back was broken. The Indian spinners did the mopping up. There were three of them on constant rotation, and to the Australians, they must have looked as mesmerising as jugglers' balls, now this way, now that. Glenn Maxwell put up the most competent resistance, until rightly judged not to have played a shot at R Ashwin. Maxwell has many shots, but the fake is not one of them. None the less, he has staked out No 6 for now. Shaun Marsh batted low and under the duress of a sore back, and lasted just six balls for a total of 20 for the match, and will be 34 by the time next  summer's Ashes come around, and so is again where he has spent his whole career, at the crossroads, bent double.

This is the last of 13 Test matches for Australia since the season began an age go in Sri Lanka. In that time, they have melted down and been recast, and emerged in such an exciting guise that somehow they  convinced themselves and then their countrymen they could ambush India in India. Considering that five of this XI have played fewer than 10 Tests, it was a pipe dream, and so it has ultimately proved. The light brigade came up short again, the Alamo could not hold out.

But you can be certain that is not how Australia sees it. As Smith trudged from the field on Monday night, he could be discerned to utter a pithy one-word judgement, addressing not any player, nor an opponent, but the day, the Test, the series and the now dead win-in-India vision: "Bastard."

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