Captain Smith key to Australian hopes

It’s taken all of two days, but Steve Smith has been assigned the first ‘captain’s innings’ assignment of his embryonic Test leadership career as Australia bids to claw back India’s ascendancy in the second Commonwealth Bank Test.

When the dual threat of murky skies and imminent storms brought the second day at the Gabba to a premature close, Australia were 4-221 and 187 runs adrift of India with Smith still unbeaten on 65.

With India’s bowlers yet to dismiss him in this series and with only the injured Mitchell Marsh, wicketkeeper Brad Haddin and his bowlers left to support him the responsibility for erasing that deficit rests largely with the 25-year-old skipper.

He showed no sign that the responsibility was a burden during his innings in the gathering dark this afternoon, taking the attack to Indian Ravi Ashwin for a pair of stunning sixes in a single over and appearing as untroubled as his recent record would suggest.

But on the day that paceman Josh Hazlewood became the first Australian bowler since Nathan Lyon to capture five wickets in the first bowling outing of his Test career, Smith has the chance to emulate India’s Virat Kohli from last week and become one of the rare captains to make a ton on his leadership debut.

While the Australians have looked untroubled on the true Brisbane surface to date, they found a way to lose regular wickets just as partnerships were beginning to form.

David Warner, the batsman who forced India to play catch-up from the opening half hour of the first Test, failed to reach 50 for just the third time in his past 12 innings and offered the Indian pace attack some timely food for thought in the process.

As he had done in Adelaide with such minimal effect, Ishant Sharma began his attack on Australia’s left-handed opening pair from around the wicket, a tactic that did little other than open up the off-side field where Warner loves to blaze.

Which is what he happily did until India’s clearly unimpressed skipper MS Dhoni barked some instructions down the pitch and the battle resumed from a more conventional, over-the-wicket aspect and was duly rewarded.

Though it was Umesh Yadav, brought into the XI in place of Mohammed Shami, who secured the first of the two breakthroughs the tourists so keenly sought.

Warner had arrived at the Gabba this morning proudly brandishing his new 2lb 9oz brute of a bat that looked like it might have been originally hewn from a tree to fashion a bookcase.

Certainly the vast, planed edges gave the impression they could comfortably shelve Dostoevsky’s back catalogue.

But having warmed it up with half a dozen scorching boundaries in his 29, the opener became cramped for room with the more direct attack and as he shaped to flick a short ball off his hip the leading edge sent it steepling into the sky and then the hands of first slip.

The next wickets to fall were triumphs for India’s patience and planning as their captain, often maligned for his conservatism in the field, played to his hunches and employed many and varied catchers to try and keep Australia on the back foot.

Shane Watson once more looked set to post the sizeable score he so often threatens but Dhoni kept the infield tight to tempt the Australian to chance his arm, and the offering was duly snared by Shikhar Dhawan at mid-on.

Who then launched into a spontaneous Punjabi celebration ritual that included inner thigh-slapping and imaginary moustache twirling.

Chris Rogers, who bought himself some breathing space if not a complete lungful of relief with a tidy half-century, also fell to the tighter, at-the-body line when he gloved a catch off his hip.

And the hefty slice of overdue luck Shaun Marsh was granted when Ajinkya Rahane camped under a skied pull shot at leg gully, but then hardly impeded its plummet as it returned to earth. 

That fortune mounted to nought however when Marsh nicked off to slip in Yadav’s next over having not added to his total.

Given the all or zeros nature of the elder Marsh’s Test career to date, the circumspect manner in which collected his first dozen runs was understandable.

The 31-year-old spoke on Test eve about the work he’s put into ensuring he is mentally and physically ready to begin his innings when called to the crease.

That he arrives with a plan to counter what he knows will be coming his way.

For that reason the dismissal of Rogers that signalled the tea break meant he had an additional 20 minutes to hone that preparation.

And having reached the dozen that represented his highest Test score in his fifth match against India – with a narrow play-and-miss and an inside edge that looped beyond the bat-pad catcher along the way – Marsh found his feet with a pair of spanking boundaries off Ishant Sharma.

But barely an hour later he stumbled, leaving his hamstrung younger brother Mitchell to lend one to the skipper’s lone hand to try and wrest back the momentum Australia’s bowlers had snatched in claiming 6-97 from 26 overs prior to lunch.

That was when Hazlewood plonked his 196cm frame squarely between India and their ambition to post a first-innings total in excess of 450, which would have gone a long way to pushing an Australian win into the realm of the unlikely.

Showing no lingering effects of the multiple muscle cramps that forced him from the field and kept him company for some time in the dressing room, he produced the most memorable delivery of his two-day Test career to snare the key breakthrough in this morning’s third over.

A ball after Ajinkya Rahane crisply drove a full offering to the cover rope, Hazlewood landed a textbook outswinger on off stump at a length that Rahane was committed to play and it was a testament to the batsman’s competence that he nicked it as it shaped away.

Rahane looked understandably rueful at missing his third Test century of the year, especially having started day two exhibiting the same sort of touch he showed the previous afternoon, which he likened to batting in Chennai or his native Mumbai.

But Hazelwood could have justifiably argued he was due the breakthrough in the knowledge he narrowly missed claiming the 26-year-old twice within three deliveries – an off-cutter than whispered past the stumps and a miscued pull shot that fell just out of reach – before he had scored.

Less of a revelation was Rohit Sharma’s dismissal for 32 when he drove needlessly at a wide, full delivery that Steve Smith did well to pluck in his right hand as he swan dived from second slip.

The absence of surprise came because while Sharma might have last month set a new world record for the highest recorded ODI score, his Test returns have dwindled since twin tons in his first two outings against the West Indies last year.

To the extent that he’s reached 50 in a solitary innings since then, and averaged just over 23 along that journey.

But the frailty that defined India’s lower-order in both innings in Adelaide was noticeably stiffened when skipper MS Dhoni and offspinner Ravi Ashwin – important inclusions for this match – put together an enterprising 57-run seventh-wicket stand just when Australia wanted it least.

Dhoni began his knock very much like a man who had not seen a competitive game in almost two months, opting to wear bouncers from Hazlewood and Mitchell Johnson on his upper body rather than deflect them with his bat.

Both batsmen tucked into the all-too-often wide variety offered by Mitchell Starc as he battled to find his range, but when he was substituted for Hazlewood at the Gabba’s Vulture Street end the Indian innings end was not far away.

Bowling that Glenn McGrath-like line and the similarly nagging length that was made more problematic by the bounce generated by his high action and long levers, the debutant etched his name upon Australian cricket’s honour board in gold leaf with his fifth wicket.

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Looming over his teammates as they swarmed to celebrate his fifth wicket, the quietly-spoken country boy was handed the ball and reminded it was his place to hold it aloft and acknowledge the applause, which he did with an aw-shucks self consciousness.

But while he remained the centre of the attention as he led his team into the lunch adjournment from which the Australian openers would emerge to begin their team’s pursuit as storm clouds closed in, the Indians could also help themselves to a serving of solace.

For history counselled them that no team has made more than 400 in the first innings of a Test match at the Gabba and ended up as losers.