Aussies edge ahead on tense day two

It’s doubtful Steve Smith’s young team will find themselves having to dig deeper to extract such a minimal advantage as they were forced to do on a gripping day two of the second Test against India.

Cradling their one-nil series lead brought from Pune, the unfancied tourists fought a relentless Indian attack on a pitch that’s even less reliable than the previous week’s to overtake the home team’s first day total of 189.

And at 6-237, they take a precious 48-run advantage into day three, where every run in ascendancy will carry an exchange rate of three to four times its face value such is the nature of a surface from which balls routinely spin, spit, die and dance.

Meaning that even the most accomplished batters with the most watertight techniques will find themselves undone by fast or slow bowlers who will prove increasingly tough to counter the longer this match runs.

Australia can thank two star performers and a strong support cast for their advantage that came at a rate of less than two runs per over for most of the day.

Matt Renshaw again played with surety and skill that belies his infancy at Test level to craft 60 in more than four hours.

While Shaun Marsh added further to his considerable credentials as a subcontinent batting specialist by top-scoring with a patient 66 across almost as many minutes and looking more at ease with the most testing conditions than any other batter in Australia’s line-up.

But it was the doggedness the tourists showed in countering India’s spinners and quicks while refusing to give up wickets without the most determined fight that characterised a day where tempers frayed and techniques were tested.

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A day that began in an identical fashion to how two of the previous five mornings have got underway in this most compelling series – with a boundary.

David Warner gleefully accepting a poorly wrapped gift from Ishant Sharma, a half-volley on leg stump that he duly helped to the fine leg fence with almost as little effort as he wagered risk.

Indeed, while Warner was at the wicket Australia looked likely to make a mockery of the struggles India had encountered on the Bengaluru pitch a day earlier.

A crisply punched stroke through cover from Ishant’s next over had the opener scoring at almost a run a ball upon resumption, which seemed too good to last and was revealed as such three overs later.

When Warner stalled in his crease and pushed tepidly at an Ashwin off-break that pitched in the rough wide of the left-hander’s leg stump and spun almost square past the face of Warner’s imposing bat to flatten his off stump.

The spontaneous celebration that erupted around Ashwin might have been sparked by India’s belief that strike had brought them back into the Test after a wasteful first day and a luckless hour or more of bowling.

But it may also have been a symptom of their best bowler’s belief that he has the full measure of Australia’s vice-captain, having dismissed him eight times in a touch above 50 overs that he has sent Warner’s way in Test cricket.

Certainly Warner’s departure brought an altogether different rhythm to the day, one that percolated along for the ensuing five-and-a-half hours as Australia clawed out their most hard-earned first-innings advantage of recent memory.

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The raw numbers give only a snapshot of the struggle Renshaw, Smith and Shaun Marsh waged on a pitch that is proving more problematic than its poorly rated predecessor in Pune, largely because it yields spiteful variations in bounce.

As well as the exaggerated turn that has proved such a benefit for Australia’s spin pair Nathan Lyon and Steve O’Keefe, but which their Indian counterparts had proved unable to find a meaningful dividend.

Until today.

In the 29 overs bowled between day’s start and lunch, Australia found just 47 runs but lost their two most important wickets – Warner and Smith, whose 81-minute stay was a blur of perpetual motion until such times as the ball was in play.

His eight from 52 balls faced was the most laboured innings (of 20 deliveries or more) that he’s produced in 51-and-a-half Tests, and the first time in more than three years that he’s survived for more than a handful of balls and failed to register a boundary.

But it was a knock that included more extravagant bat wielding gestures, animated facial expressions, spirited verbal exchanges and voluble beseeching aimed at himself (and occasionally his batting partner) than most knocks he’s played over 15 months as Test skipper.

The dejected, head down posture he adopted on squeezing Jadeja to short leg was in part reflection of a job hard done yet barely done at all, though possibly even more a symptom of his mode of dismissal.

Playing for spin that didn’t manifest and getting beaten on the inside of the bat, the enemy that he and his team had identified as the most potent threat heading into this campaign and one that Smith and his fellow batters have worked so diligently in past weeks to try and eradicate.

Image Id: 45EA93B04D8B47B09925B21011E30747 Image Caption: Steve Smith was as animated and focused as he's ever been // BCCI

There was also a haunting similarity in the increasing difficulty to score that Australia experienced through that session, and the manner in which India’s innings had played out a day earlier.

Where they lost a crucial second wicket in the shadows of Saturday lunch, which in turn precipitated a free-fall of wickets in the session-and-a-half that followed.

Which is why Renshaw’s innings assumed such elephantine proportion, in much the same way India’s KL Rahul stood alone as the heroically defiant figure amid his team’s day one surrender.

The point of difference being that while Rahul is only slightly older (24 years alongside Renshaw’s 20) and has marginally more Test miles under his cap (15 against the Queenslander’s six), the Australia opener had no experience of India until he arrived in Mumbai three weeks ago.

So his epic stay of 263 minutes on a pitch that is as alien to him as India’s idiosyncratic cuisine, and where Rahul has played many of his first-class matches in the city of his birth, carried perhaps even greater merit even if it brought 30 fewer runs.

Image Id: 0A010073EB9C4AC0806C260B02074D2E Image Caption: Renshaw belied his 20 years with a 263-minute stay in the middle // BCCI

A carbon copy of so many previous innings of Renshaw’s impressive Test stay to date, this was not a thing of beauty with a majority of the 26 runs he scored in boundaries coming via the outside edge, and bobbling through the slips cordon.

But it dripped with character and courage, his powers of concentration challenged like rarely before as balls fizzed and popped around him as was his unerring judgement to allow those that threatened the stumps to whizz harmlessly by.

A process so mentally and physically sapping that it was fair to excuse Renshaw when, two balls after advancing at Jadeja and landing his first really clean strike beyond the mid-off boundary, he aimed a repeat blow.

Only to flag his intentions a fraction early, thus allowing Jadeja the chance to spear the ball down the leg side and the stumping to be completed.

Renshaw carried a hybrid of exhaustion and disappointment from the field to appreciative applause, although his frustration doubtless compounded over the next hour as Australia lost a couple of crucial wickets while still in arrears.

Peter Handscomb falling victim to his refusal to shelve his naturally positive game until Ashwin hauled in an unnaturally canny catch at mid-wicket.

And Mitchell Marsh then done cold by the pitch, pinned in front by a ball that scurried underneath his perfectly perpendicular defensive stroke.

Although the duck he registered will only serve as fodder for his phalanx of critics, and may cause selectors to ponder a change for the third Test in Ranchi given Marsh’s all-round skills have been called on to deliver just two overs in the series to date.