India spinners mesmerise as Aussies crumble to defeat

India's spinners defied Australia with the bat and then mesmerised them with the ball as the visitors' frailties in turning conditions were exposed in a frenetic finish to the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series opener in Nagpur.

After player-of-the-match Ravindra Jadeja (70 off 185 balls) and Axar Patel (84 off 174) allowed India’s tail to add 79 runs in the morning, Ravichandran Ashwin (5-37) led a bewitching bowling effort in the afternoon that saw the visitors skittled in a single session.

The 91 runs the visitors cobbled together, with none aside from Steve Smith (25no) passing 20, marked Australia's lowest ever score in India.

The innings-and-132-run defeat has left Australia 0-1 down in the series with three games to play, a position from which they have never come back from to beat India before.

 

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The tourists dropped four catches in India's first-innings of 400 but it was their meek performance with the bat that will sting the most as they head to Delhi for the second Test beginning next Friday.

Nine of their third-afternoon dismissals were to defensive shots, six of them lbw, with Ashwin and Jadeja’s always-probing line exposing Australia's earlier ineffectiveness with the ball.

Not one of their batters passed fifty for the match and their best performer in one of the more experienced sides Australia has fielded in India in recent years was 22-year-old Todd Murphy, who had a grand sum of seven first-class games to his name before this Test.

Murphy, who finished with 7-124 from a marathon 47 overs, returned the best figures by an Australian spinner on debut since Jason Krejza's 8-215 in 2008, also coming at the VCA Stadium.

His finest ball of the match was a drifting delivery left by Jadeja (70 off 185) which knocked back his off-stump, the kind of dismissal the Indian left-armer would later in the day pose such a significant threat with.

"He (Murphy) was fantastic on debut," captain Pat Cummins told the host broadcaster. "He's been really impressive in the last year or so since he's been on the radar. He bowled plenty of overs and he was fantastic."

India's tail nonetheless put on 171 after captain Rohit Sharma's masterful century had come to an end late on day two, a sobering statistic for an Australian team that had actually held a slender lead when they took India's fifth wicket less than 24 hours earlier.

Opening the batting after the hosts took a 223-run first-innings lead, Usman Khawaja (5) departed for his second single-figure score of the match when, three balls after cover-driving Ashwin for four, the left-hander was lured into the same shot again but edged straight to slip.

David Warner (10 off 41) fought tooth and nail in a gripping contest with Ashwin after Virat Kohli spilled an easy chance off him at slip. But, after he too felt like he might have had the bowler's measure by slapping consecutive boundaries, he was beaten on his inside edge and struck on the pad.

The men batting in place of the injured Cameron Green and the dropped Travis Head did not last as long. Matthew Renshaw, who narrowly avoided a king pair but added just two runs in his second go, and Peter Handscomb (6) were also both out lbw to Ashwin, the latter on review.

Alex Carey (10) suffered the same fate after dropping to one knee and paddling his first two balls for four, departing for the second time in the match attempting a reverse-sweep to seal Ashwin's 31st five-wicket haul.

For the second time in the match, all four Aussie bowlers failed to reach double-figures with the bat as Mohammad Shami (2-13) trapped Boland lbw for a duck to seal the victory.

Hoping for a quick kill this morning with their deficit at 144 at the beginning of play, Australia's day could hardly have begun in worse fashion.

Nathan Lyon had reviews against Axar and Shami turned down, before Boland rubbed salt into the wound when he put down a simple chance at long-on off the latter.

Axar's majestic four-hour knock belied his spot in the batting order (No.9) as he posted a career-high score, using his feet judiciously to the off-spinners, playing inside big turners and picking off their short balls.

But Shami proved their biggest frustration, taking advantage of Cummins' call to exclusively bowl Lyon and Murphy to him by pasting the first-gamer for three sixes, including two off consecutive deliveries.

Murphy, after accounting for Jadeja, extracted some revenge over Shami when Carey pouched a skied catch to give him his seventh wicket.

Having not thrown Boland the ball for the entirety of the third morning, Cummins finally knocked over Axar with an off-cutter before the lunch break, but only after the hosts' first-innings tally had grown well beyond their reach.

Australia XI: David Warner, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith, Matt Renshaw, Peter Handscomb, Alex Carey (wk), Pat Cummins (c), Todd Murphy, Nathan Lyon, Scott Boland.

India XI: Rohit Sharma (c), KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, KS Bharat (wk), Ravi Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Mohammed Siraj, Mohammed Shami.

Border-Gavaskar Qantas Tour of India 2023

February 9-13: India won by an innings and 132 runs

February 17-21: Second Test, Delhi, 3pm AEDT

March 1-5: Third Test, Dharamsala, 3pm AEDT

March 9-13: Fourth Test, Ahmedabad, 3pm AEDT

All matches will be broadcast live and exclusive on Fox Cricket and Kayo Sports

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Ashton Agar, Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Peter Handscomb, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Lance Morris, Todd Murphy, Matthew Renshaw, Steve Smith (vc), Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, David Warner

India squad: (for the first two Tests) Rohit Sharma (c), KL Rahul (vc), Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KS Bharat, Ishan Kishan, Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Jaydev Unadkat, Suryakumar Yadav