Jaiswal, Rahul flip the script on day two with unbeaten stand

An astonishing about-face with India defying recent history and a flagging Australia attack has left the home team needing to produce their best run chase in almost two decades to contemplate victory in the opening Test.

India begin day three odds-on to take a 1-0 series lead at 0-172 and already holding an overall lead of 218 runs with three days to play, all of which are forecast to be completed under sunny Perth skies.

The last time Australia successfully chased down a fourth-innings target above 250 on home soil was at the SCG in 2006, when they were just two wickets down upon reaching 288 against South Africa in Ricky Ponting's 100th Test.

In a scarcely explainable contrast to day one of the series in which 17 wickets fell and no batter reached 50, having prised out Australia's last three batters for the addition of a 37 in the first session, India cruised past 150 without loss.

Against a bowling outfit increasingly bereft of answers on a pitch that 24 hours earlier had offered nothing but batting problems, Yashasvi Jaiswal (90no) and KL Rahul (62no) showed how it is done.

Jaiswal lived up to his pre-tour reputation as a batting revelation, blending sublime timing as he threaded gaps in the field particularly square on the off-side, with innovation such as the ramp over slips and brute force with a couple of sixes.

Rahul, filling in for regular skipper Rohit Sharma who remains on paternity leave, followed his dogged 26 when batting was an altogether different proposition on the opening morning with just his second half-century in eight Test innings.

The pair's near-flawless partnership is within sight of India's best-ever opening stand against Australia on their rivals' home patch, the 191 fashioned by Sunil Gavaskar and Kris Srikkanth at the SCG in 1985-86.

It also already stands as the eighth-best first-wicket partnership by any visiting openers in Australia over almost 150 years of Test cricket.

From the moment Jasprit Bumrah completed a five-wicket haul with his opening delivery of day two, India held sway with Australia's hopes of slipping behind in their bid to retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy already dependent on a batting line-up that misfired at first attempt.

And where Australia's specialist batters had barely been able to lay bat on Bumrah when the pitch was a day younger, and the tailenders found it an equally difficult chore upon resumption today, India's opening pair looked to be operating on a substituted surface.

Or against an altogether different cohort of quicks from those who had dominated on day one.

Australia's best-performed bowler from yesterday, Josh Hazlewood who claimed 4-29 from 13 immaculate overs on Friday, again appeared most potent and conceded just nine runs from his first 10 overs either side of tea.

However, the knack of extracting a nick that had characterised a first innings when all 10 India wickets fell to catches taken behind the stumps deserted Australia with not a genuine chance created across more than a session of batting.

From the time Jaiswal notched his first boundary in Test cricket on Australia's turf – a neat tuck off his hip in Mitchell Starc's second over – the frantic urgency that took hold a day earlier was replaced by an assured calm.

Perhaps it was greater familiarity with conditions, maybe the knowledge they were ahead in the game but India were clearly content to extend their lead incrementally rather than incandescently.

That approach was also informed by the reality the first phase of the Test had played out in fast-forward and India could conceivably bat for two full days and still have sufficient time to force a result.

The first 50 stand of the Test arrived in the 15th over of the third innings, from which India's opening duo helped themselves to nine runs off the normally parsimonious Pat Cummins.

On a pitch that has proved manna for fast bowlers until India batted a second time, Cummins has struggled to find rhythm and conceded runs at an uncharacteristic rate of almost four per over across both innings.

Jaiswal then became the first individual in the match to reach a half-century, the exciting 22-year-old banishing memories of his first-innings duck with the first milestone moment for India's batters in this series.

Later in the same over from Lyon, a single to Rahul brought the pair's 100-run stand making them the first India openers to celebrate a century union in Australia since Virender Sehwag and Akash Chopra followed up the 141 they put on at the MCG in 2003-04 with 123 in the following Test in Sydney.

As a measure of Australia's sudden impotence with the ball today, it wasn't until the 47th over of the home team's batting today that India felt compelled to deploy a fifth bowler, spinner Washington Sundar.

India were just 15 overs into their knock today before Australia threw the ball to their third-change option Nathan Lyon, and just 24 overs in when they let loose their sixth in wildcard medium-pacer, Marnus Labuschagne.

But it wasn't until the final ball of the 41st over that Australia saw the closest they had come to a chance, when Jaiswal aimed a big off-drive at Starc and the resultant outside edge brushed the fingertips of Usman Khawaja at slip as he leaned languidly forward.

By that time Jaiswal was 51 and just getting into stride.

Having missed that half-chance, Australia might have grabbed another next ball when Rahul set off for a tight single only to be sent back by his partner and could have been marginally short of his ground if Steve Smith had scored a direct hit.

But as shadows stretched across the ground and the Australians' collective spirit – so demonstrably buoyant after dismantling India for 150 yesterday – seemed to sag, India's openers turned the screw.

Jaiswal signalled his intent to open his shoulders with a desultory flick off his pads that sent Starc beyond the boundary at backward square leg, before skipping down the pitch and launching an even bigger blow off Lyon that landed 25 rows back at long-on.

That strike lifted India's lead beyond 200 and, with all 10 wickets still intact, a familiar air of invincibility began to build around their trophy defence.

It had taken their inspirational leader Bumrah a single delivery on the second morning to resume his role as India's wrecker-in-chief.

No need for a loosener, the India skipper landed ball one on his trademark probing length that drew Australia's last recognised batter Alex Carey into a defensive prod he then attempted to abort, but not before if had grazed his bat.

With Bumrah and 22-year-old Test debutant Harshit Rana regularly pushing bowling speeds above 140kph, as Starc and Lyon repeatedly prodded speculatively at the former and withstood a bouncer barrage from the latter.

At one point Starc, having fended yet another uncomfortable short delivery from Rana towards the off-side, good naturedly told his young IPL teammate "Harshit, I bowl faster than you … and I've got a long memory."

It was a ball from Rana homing in on his rib cage that did for Lyon, bunting a simple catch to gully in an act of pure self-defence.

At 9-79, Australia were staring at their lowest innings total against India, which remains the 83 they were rolled for when Kapil Dev tore through their batting at the MCG in 1981.

That unwanted history was avoided when Hazlewood (on 1) edged Bumrah to the left of keeper Rishabh Pant who, despite flinging himself full-length as the chance whizzed by, failed to lay a glove as it sped to the boundary.

It would take India a further 14 overs and an additional hour of toil to finally break that last-wicket stand which yielded an invaluable 25 runs to lift Australia beyond the embarrassment of a tally below 100.

But their final score of 104 – completed when Starc holed out for an innings-high 26 from more than two hours' batting – was their lowest in Test cricket since being out for 91 by a Bumrah-less India attack at Nagpur last year.

That benchmark would not have been breached if Starc had not found doughty support from Hazlewood who has again proved his batting credentials after Australia's top-order had succumbed.

In the past three instances of the team's 10th wicket pair producing the highest partnership of the innings, Hazlewood has been part of all of them.

In addition to today's 110-ball union with Starc, he was involved in adding 116 as silent partner alongside Cameron Green against New Zealand at Wellington earlier this year, and 97 with then-Test rookie Adam Voges against West Indies at Dominica in 2015.

While Australia were grateful for their final pair whittling India's first-innings lead below 50, they would also have noted with some alarm the demons of day one seemed to have diminished under Perth's brighter Saturday sunshine.

And so it proved when the visitors' batters went bat to the middle after lunch today to strengthen their hold on the series opener.

NRMA Insurance Men's Test Series v India

First Test: November 22-26: Perth Stadium, 1.20pm AEDT

Second Test: December 6-10: Adelaide Oval, 3pm AEDT (D/N)

Third Test: December 14-18: The Gabba, Brisbane, 11.20am AEDT

Fourth Test: December 26-30: MCG, Melbourne, 10.30am AEDT

Fifth Test: January 3-7: SCG, Sydney, 10.30am AEDT

Australia squad: (first Test only) Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey (wk), Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Nathan McSweeney, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc

India squad: Rohit Sharma (c), Jasprit Bumrah (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant, Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar. Reserves: Mukesh Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed