India complete epic turnaround to level series

A year that has produced more than its feasible quota of unforeseen events has foreclosed with one of Test cricket's more remarkable reversals after India completed an emphatic win over Australia to level the four-match Vodafone Test Series.

The chances of India rebounding so quickly from their humiliation at Adelaide Oval last Sunday week seemed infinitely more than socially distant when their best batter and inspirational leader Virat Kohli returned home on planned paternity leave and injuries to fast bowlers grew to a cluster.

But under stand-in skipper and inaugural Johnny Mullagh Medal winner as player of the match in the second Test Ajinkya Rahane (due reward for posting the sole century of the campaign to date), India have not only squared the series but seized the initiative.

Armed with effectively ruthless bowling plans to Australia's under-siege top-order, though carrying a few batting concerns of their own, India enter the final two Tests with the buoyancy that percolated through the Australia camp a week ago.

It took Rahane's team less than two sessions to complete today's eight-wicket win, the same margin by which they were defeated in the first Test.

Most ominously, and perhaps instructively for Australia's national selectors who have much to mull before the next Test starts on January 7, it was two men making their Test debuts at the MCG who led today's charge.

Seamer Mohammed Siraj snared the key wicket of Australia's last recognised batter Cameron Green as Australia's last four batters fell for 67 in the first session, leaving India a nominal victory target of 70.

Then 21-year-old opener Shubman Gill stroked a classy, unbeaten 35 at a run a ball to settle nerves after the loss of two early wickets provoked flashbacks to the Adelaide calamity when India were knocked over for 36.

It represents the most marked turnaround in India's Test fortunes since they responded to the humiliation of an innings defeat to England at Lord's in 2018 with a thumping 203-run win in the following match at Trent Bridge starting less than a week later.

But even that about-face was engineered by Kohli who scored 97 and 103, so to have walloped Australia so comprehensively on their home patch without him will instil huge confidence in the touring team with two Tests to play.

Chasing a smaller target than Australia were required to reel in at Adelaide, India's own top-order frailties were exposed early when opener Mayank Agarwal's wretched run of form continued.

Having already lost his first Test opening partner Prithvi Shaw after his dual failure (0 and 4) in Adelaide, Agarwal must now be sweating on his own future after he was caught behind for five in Mitchell Starc's third over.

With experienced opener KL Rahul in form and in the wings, Agarwal's series return of 31 runs from four innings leaves him vulnerable even if he can claim to being top scorer in the Adelaide aberration, albeit with a tally of nine.

As the batting hero of India's historic first Test series win in Australia two seasons ago, Cheteshwar Pujara is not facing similar pressure but his contribution to the campaign thus far has been negligible and his frustration showed when he fell soon after Agarwal.

The usually implacable right-hander kicked the MCG pitch in annoyance when he hung his bat at the fourth ball he faced, and it glanced Pat Cummins to gully where Green clutched the waist-high chance.

At 2-19 and with memories of their second innings capitulation 10 days earlier still hauntingly clear, India's anxiety was eased when rookie opener Shubman Gill – bearing no direct scars of the Adelaide collapse – found the boundary twice in Starc's next over.

India had equalled their lowest-ever Test score by the time Josh Hazlewood – the man who consigned them to it by claiming 5-8 from five overs at Adelaide – was brought into the attack.

But like his teammates, he was unable to reconjure the magic of a week and a bit ago and India's win was fittingly sealed when Rahane knocked Nathan Lyon for a single behind square leg before tucking his bat under his arm in a sign there remains unfinished business.

As early as the last session of the third day, as Australia lurched to 6-99 and needing another 32 runs to avoid an innings defeat, comparisons were being drawn with the last-gasp defiance shown in the fabled 1982 Ashes Test at the MCG.

In that game, Australia slumped to 7-190 chasing a victory target of 292 before skipper Allan Border formed alliances with tailenders Geoff Lawson, Rodney Hogg and Jeff Thomson before falling three runs short on a dramatic final morning.

But a more contemporary and comforting comparison might have been last year's Ashes contest at Headingley where England were – by any historical metric – beyond hope at 9-286 pursuing a distant 362 before Ben Stokes launched an assault that endures in nightmares of many current Australia players.

In both those cases, the senior specialist batters – Border and Stokes – were seasoned Test players with multiple centuries to their credit.

Contrastingly, Australia's hopes rested heavily upon 21-year-old Green whose highest Test score heading into his third innings for his country was 12.

And whose only prior first-class experience at the MCG was a Marsh Sheffield Shield game last summer where he batted half an hour for Western Australia on the first morning and was struck a couple of stinging blows before the match was abandoned due to the dangerous nature of the pitch.

However, Green showed he is possessed of temperament the measure of his daunting talent in surviving almost three hours and forging his team's most productive partnership of a sub-par innings with vice-captain Cummins.

The pair added 57 for the seventh wicket as Cummins channelled his past Test best with the bat – the 63 he scored across more than three and a half hours in a similarly bleak cause when India last visited the MCG two summers ago.

He had reached 19 when India felt they had him lbw, as Cummins pushed forward to Ashwin with bat raised above his head and was struck on the knee roll of his front pad.

However, the not out decision delivered on-field was upheld after India's review showed the ball bouncing past and over Cummins' leg stump.

It left India with a solitary DRS referral at their disposal and, as the seventh-wicket stand passed 50 and Australia's lead crawled towards 20, the visitors best hope of terminating the innings before lunch came with the arrival of the second new-ball 45 minutes into the session.

It took just 17 deliveries for that ploy to bring results, as Cummins found himself in the cross-hairs of a Jasprit Bumrah bouncer he tried to avoid but, in a tangle of evasion and self-preservation, gloved a simple catch to second slip.

Despite his junior status within the Australia XI, Green assumed seniority with the bat and having scored 33 from 116 balls up until Cummins' dismissal he peeled off a couple of exquisite boundaries in the search of a defendable lead.

The cut shot executed against Bumrah off one knee that sped to the fence at backward point was likely the stroke of the innings, and he followed it several overs later with a crisp on-drive through mid-on for his fifth four.

But two balls later, and with his maiden Test half-century beckoning, Green rocked back to a short ball from Siraj that skidded on to him and attempted to pull it into the vacant acreage that beckoned beyond mid-wicket.

The ball struck high on the bat and instead looped obligingly to Ravindra Jadeja in the in-field, the second time in three Test innings that Green has perished in trying to slap a shot in the air through mid-wicket.

With just three wickets to land and facing a deficit of 46 upon Green's departure, India resisted the temptation to over-attack and stuck, instead, to the bowling plans that have served them so well throughout the series to date.

It wasn't only spinner Ravi Ashwin who felt he'd removed Mitchell Starc when he was adjudged caught at slip at nine but the batter himself who – after calling for a review that examined both the catch (that came off his boot) and lbw (missing leg stump) – had all but left the field so resigned was he to his fate.

Four balls later it was Lyon making his exit, caught off his glove down the leg side to give Siraj his fifth wicket of a memorable debut Test.

And with the lunch break deferred with Australia nine wickets down, Starc and Hazlewood survived to the brink of the adjournment before the latter shouldered arms to Ashwin and watched as the ball clattered into his off stump unimpeded.

In many ways, it was a thumbnail sketch of the teams, respective and reversed fortunes from India's historic low in Adelaide.

Vodafone Test Series v India 2020-21

Australia Test squad: Tim Paine (c), Joe Burns, Pat Cummins, Cameron Green, Marcus Harris, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Moises Henriques, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Michael Neser, James Pattinson, Will Pucovski, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, Matthew Wade, David Warner

India Test squad: Virat Kohli (c) (first Test only), Ajinkya Rahane (vice-captain), Rohit Sharma, Mayank Agarwal, Prithvi Shaw, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Hanuma Vihari, Shubman Gill, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Rishabh Pant (wk), Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammed Siraj

First Test: Australia won by eight wickets

Second Test: India won by eight wickets

Third Test: January 7-11, SCG, 10.30am AEDT

Fourth Test: January 15-19, Gabba, 11am AEDT