Labuschagne, Smith push Australia into strong position

For the second time in less than a month, a run-out via the rifle right-arm of Josh Hazlewood has sparked an India batting free-fall and radically altered the trajectory of a Test match that is descending into a battle of attrition.

Hazlewood's freakish effort to throw down the stumps while tumbling to the turf during today's morning session caught India's Hanuma Vihari a metre from safety, and set in motion a cascade of wickets as the visitors lost 7-102 to be dismissed for 244 on the stroke of tea.

The 94-run advantage they ceded to Australia was then stretched to 197 with eight wickets up their sleeves on a pitch already beginning to exhibit worrying signs of variable bounce as India's injury toll continued to mount.

Not that the batting challenges fazed Australia's first innings batting saviours Marnus Labuschagne (47no) and Steve Smith (29no) who have already forged an unbeaten 68-run stand for the third-wicket in Australia's 2-103 against a hobbled and inexperienced India bowling attack.

Hazlewood's virtuoso effort was more athletic but no less influential than his gentle return to Nathan Lyon – who was also bowling at today's crucial juncture – that saw India's then skipper Virat Kohli stranded and run out on the first evening of last month's Adelaide Test.

That triggered an extraordinary shift in that game – Kohli's sole appearance of the Vodafone Series before he returned home for paternity leave – as his team's last seven wickets then fell for 45 before they were bowled out for 36 in the second innings and plunged to defeat.

The situation in Sydney is not yet that dire.

But India's challenging day was rendered more melancholy by injuries sustained by wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant (elbow) and spin-bowling allrounder Ravindra Jadeja (thumb) who were struck painful blows while batting against Australia's merciless fast bowlers.

Pant was sent for scans after being hit flush on the left arm by Pat Cummins and did not take the gloves in Australia's second innings, with reserve keeper Wriddhiman Saha allowed to enter the game as a substitute under recently revised ICC playing conditions.

Jadeja – India's best bowler in Australia's first innings with 4-62 – spent today's final session in the team dressing room with his left (bowling) hand bandaged after copping a blow from Mitchell Starc as he fended at a shoulder-high bouncer.

 

At one stage, early in today's final session, India fielded four substitutes with Pant, Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin and Jasprit Bumrah all in the sheds, with Kohli as well as fast bowlers Mohammed Shami (fractured arm) and Umesh Yadav (calf strain) already ruled out of the series.

But it was India's profligacy with the bat as much as their problems in the medical room that saw them squander a chance to forge a position of strength with the four-match series tied at one-all.

Shortly before Vihari's hour-long occupation that yielded four runs ended in an act of self-immolation, the tourists had been making glacial but inexorable progress towards a first innings advantage with their two best batters Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane in occupation.

Like Smith and Labuschagne in Australia's first innings, the fragilities of the batting to follow meant India's hopes of a large total rested squarely on the prolific pair.

However, the preference for survival over scoring both men had shown on Friday evening continued on Saturday morning as India managed just 24 runs from 15 overs in the opening hour.

That funereal pace came at the cost of Rahane's wicket as the stand-in skipper searched for a means to score as Pujara (who scored 16 from the first 100 balls he faced) dropped anchor.

Having offered a sharp catch from Lyon that flew over the head and off the fingertips of Matthew Wade at short leg, Rahane seemed emboldened by the near miss and skipped down the pitch two balls later to loft Australia's spinner beyond the long-on boundary.

But in the following over, he tried to manufacture a late cut against a ball from Cummins angled into him and threw back his head in frustration after chopping it into his off-stump.

In the hour Vihari was at the crease before Hazlewood's sublime intervention – the big quick having just finished bowling his sixth consecutive over, conceding a miserly six runs – Pujara served notice he was shifting into second gear.

The first boundary of his innings (an on-drive past Lyon's outstretched right hand) was followed two balls later by a square cut to the point boundary, and then a third several overs later as he punched Hazlewood through mid-off.

The need for speed was picked up by Pant upon replacing the fatally sluggish Vihari, with the keeper helping himself to 34 from 57 balls faced before he tried to pull a Cummins' short ball that crashed into his left arm and saw him receive more than five minutes of on-field treatment.

Pant kept batting but was clearly affected, constantly flexing the fingers on his left hand and calling for more medical intervention before a full delivery from Hazlewood coaxed him into a loose drive that sliced to first slip.

When Pujara fell in the next over, helpless to do much other than get a glove to a brutal ball from Cummins that climbed above the shoulder of the right-hander's usually impassable bat, India remained 143 runs in arrears with only the bottom half of their batting make up that deficit.

In their haste to narrow that margin, India lost another two wickets to run-outs as the pressure Australia exerted with the ball was maintained by their hyper-alert in-fielders.

Ashwin was found centimetres short after responding late to Jadeja's call for a single, with Cummins' pin-point throw from mid-off found Labuschagne hovering over the striker's end stumps.

Then Labuschagne produced what – without Hazlewood's effort – would normally have ranked as the day's fielding highlight when he sprinted from bat-pad to execute a sliding save at square leg, before springing to his feet and throwing down the bowler's end stumps with Bumrah struggling.

It represented the first time in more than a century that Australia had pulled off three run-outs in an opponent's first innings of a Test, the previous occasion arising in the third Test of the 1901-02 Ashes series at Adelaide Oval.

The other times Australia have managed to throw out three batters in a single Test innings – against Pakistan at the MCG in 1972 and the West Indies at Antigua two decades later – came in the second innings of those matches.

Portentously, however, all three of those Tests ended with Australia victories.

Vodafone Test Series v India 2020-21

Australia Test squad: Tim Paine (c), Sean Abbott, 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: Ajinkya Rahane (captain), Rohit Sharma (vice-captain), Mayank Agarwal, Prithvi Shaw, Cheteshwar Pujara, Hanuma Vihari, Shubman Gill, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Rishabh Pant (wk), Jasprit Bumrah, Navdeep Saini, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, R Ashwin, Mohammed Siraj, Shardul Thakur, Thangarasu Natarajan

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