Pujara, Cummins shine on tense day

Employing the template drafted by Steve Smith across the first day-and-a-half of this evenly-poised Test, India’s Cheteshwar Pujara cast himself as India’s batting mainstay as his team fashioned a patiently spirited response to Australia’s first innings.

Just as Smith came in at the fall of the first wicket and stood undaunted as the rest of them gradually fell around him, so too did Pujara on a day of attrition that finished with India 6-360 and 91 shy of their first innings target with two days to play.

Pujara’s 11th Test century was typically measured in conditions that challenge the patience of both batters and bowlers, but it also revealed him as one of the few India batters to deal comfortably with the raw speed and aggression of Australia’s born-again fast bowler Pat Cummins.

Playing his first Test in more than six years, Cummins was his team’s stand-out bowler in claiming four crucial wickets on a pitch that was supposed to play into the fingers of spinners, but on which Australia’s pair of tweakers managed just one wicket between them.

While turn has not been a noticeable factor through the first three days in Ranchi, a lack of bounce that is becoming more pronounced with each passing session will surely make batting an increasingly tough proposition over the final stages.

Which will, in turn, make any first-innings advantage as valuable as those newly minted Rupee 2,000 notes the Indian Government introduced on an overnight whim a few months back.

The challenges posed by this low, slow, sadly misunderstood pitch also placing the respective contributions of Smith (178no) and Pujara (130no) into clear perspective.

Just as Smith managed through his more than eight hours of batting on Thursday and Friday, Pujara was rarely troubled last night and today as he negotiated an entire day’s Test cricket with barely a false step or a half chance.

His only potential misstep being a confident lbw shout that the Australians launched off Steve O’Keefe’s bowling when the India number three was on 22.

And which was given not out on the field, with that decision upheld when the visitors called for a review despite some debate as to which order ball had made contact with bat and pad.

The verdict from third umpire Nigel Llong ensuring that Australia had burned both their available reviews in the 58th over, and eliciting a rare public sighting of India’s injured captain Virat Kohli.

Who appeared on the team balcony to demonstrably applaud the outcome, a move interpreted by many as a pointed reference to the DRS controversy that raged in the aftermath of the previous Test at Bengaluru.

Although Kohli’s abbreviated on-field role in today’s events was heavily overshadowed by Pujara’s epic knock and Cummins’s tireless bowling, the India captain was again a central figure in the day’s flashpoint.

Quick Single: Photo debunks alleged Smith 'controversy'

Which centred upon accusations that the Australians had made fun of the injury that has forced Kohli out of the action for all but his innings of six runs today, and was one of the few smouldering moments to flare in a day that played out at a far more genteel pace.

If not in quite similar spirits.

The morning session, which in keeping with established cricket folklore was deemed ‘vital’ in the way that the first stanza of any day’s play is viewed, was the one this series had promised at its outset.

When it was assumed the lifeless, batter-friendly pitches rolled out for England’s visit to the subcontinent late last year (which delivered a 4-0 triumph to the home team) would be duplicated for the Australians.

But the presence, instead, of over-cooked spin decks for the first two Tests on which neither team was able to rack up 300 – never mind the 7(dec)-759 team India amassed at Chennai three months ago – meant matches to this point had played out in fast-forward.

The Australians’ pre-tour mantra of patience, unflappability and aiming to ‘bat big' – beyond 150 overs – in their first innings of every Test had therefore been largely lost in the helter skelter of cascading wickets and unfathomable pitches.

Quick Single: Haddin applauds Wade's sharp stumping

But those whirlwind days were rendered a memory this morning as India’s overnight pair Pujara and Murali Vijay threw lack-of-caution to the gusty, dusty Ranchi west wind and slowed the game to a crawl.

The first hour yielding 24 runs from 16 overs as Vijay raised his half-century with, fittingly, a single off O’Keefe and Pujara remained even more watchful adding just 10 to his overnight tally.

On a ground whose slick outfield has been giving up boundaries the way that pappadams arrive with every evening meal, India found it just once prior to lunch.

And cleared it as many times, after Vijay launched a clinical strike on Steve O’Keefe in the day’s second over that yielded the innings only six to date.

But the pace of the day was shifted suddenly on the delivery immediately prior to lunch, when the India opener opted to charge at O’Keefe only to find himself playing for spin that never happened and falling to a smart leg-side stumping that did.

The resumption brought with it the return of Kohli, his balcony antics having only raised the level of expectation despite the fact he has seriously under-performed with the bat in the series to date.

And true to character, the India captain found himself implicated – if not directly involved – in the day’s obligatory controversy that arrived the ball before Kohli once again departed.

The moment came when Glenn Maxwell sprinted, dived and successfully prevented the ball from crossing the boundary rope in the same selfless manner that Kohli had done two days earlier, but without the same physical cost to his person.

Maxwell’s gesture, rubbing at his right shoulder while sporting a broad grin and no obvious ill-effects, might have been dismissed as a bit of cheeky gamesmanship if his stunt-roll save hadn’t meant the India batters ran three instead of pocketing four from Pujara’s strike through midwicket.

Which, in turn, meant Kohli was on strike, and promptly played a needlessly forceful push at Cummins that flew chest high to his opposing captain Steve Smith at second slip, to the understandable glee of the Australians.

It meant that India’s premier batter has now failed to reach 20 in all of his five innings of this series to date – a campaign in which Smith has been the dominant batting force – and boasts an aggregate of 46 runs at an average of 9.20.

But rather than the shock loss of form for the world’s top-ranked batter across all forms who has scored fewer runs and at a lower average than did Mitchell Marsh, it was the insensitivity that the tourists showed to Kohli’s equally suspect right shoulder that drew harsh scrutiny.

A five-minute television segment aired during the subsequent tea break decrying Australia’s mocking of an injury that the BCCI itself had described as not carrying “serious concerns” called for viewers to tweet in their outrage.

Throughout all this bluff and bluster, Pujara stood immovable and Cummins charged in with unrelenting energy having struck that telling blow with the second new ball.

It was his preparedness to utilise the short delivery – a weapon the Australians had identified before hostilities began as a potential weakness of India’s batting - that proved crucial on a pitch that otherwise offered nothing but dyspepsia to bowlers.

The ill-advised ramp shot that Ajinkya Rahane – acting captain for a the 400 minutes Kohli had spent off the field with injury – succeeded only in lobbing into keeper Matthew Wade’s gloves, was perhaps a discretionary dismissal.

But in much the same way he had accounted for opener KL Rahul on the second evening, Cummins’ ability to have batters fending on a pitch that few others have managed to raise the ball above waist high was decisive.

The removal of Ravi Ashwin in the final hour, when Australia successfully reviewed a not out call that was shown to have brushed the batter’s glove, meant it would be Pujara’s ability to bat with the tail that will determine if India can secure a first-innings lead.

And, if so, the front running in a tightly fought Test.

TEAMS

India: KL Rahul, Murali Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli (c), Ajinkya Rahane, Karun Nair, Ravichandran Ashwin, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav

Australia: David Warner, Matt Renshaw, Steve Smith (c), Shaun Marsh, Peter Handscomb, Glenn Maxwell, Matthew Wade (wk), Pat Cummins, Steve O'Keefe, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood