Marsh guides hosts towards safety

Just how far India will need to stretch history to keep alive the tussle for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy rests with Australia captain Steve Smith.

With an extended 96-over day to play and his team already 326 runs in the ascendancy with three second-innings wickets up their sleeve, the Australians hold every card by dint of their two-nil lead in the four Test Commonwealth Bank Test series against India.

Regardless of whether or not Smith chooses to continue batting into tomorrow morning or unleash his bowlers at the 10.06am start time, he holds the knowledge it would take something unprecedented, not just courageous, for India to complete the chase needed to keep the series alive.

The highest successful fourth-innings run chase at the MCG was the 332 that an England line-up featuring Herbert Sutcliffe, Jack Hobbs and Wally Hammond managed in 1929.

And the best India have managed to win a Test in Australia was the 233 they made for the loss of six-wickets in the famous Rahul Dravid-inspired victory in Adelaide 11 years ago.

Scoring on the MCG pitch tomorrow will not be impossible, as Australia’s left-handed pair Shaun Marsh (62no) and Chris Rogers (69) showed.

But the fact Smith, in the form of his young life and seemingly granted a Midas touch along with the national captaincy, was dismissed for 14 proved that the unlikely is very possible.

Although the Indians have shown a propensity in this Test, and on this tour, to fashion their own luck if not history.

The leg theory that they tried to employ with a spectacular lack of success in Australia’s first innings was refined in the second, and with far greater impact.

For a start, they got Smith out before he had posted a century.

Even before he reached 20, which had only happened on three previous occasions in 2014.

It all seemed so fiendishly simple when it worked that Smith looked more annoyed than disappointed, like he was the fall guy in a practical joke rather than the victim of a carefully-hatched plot.

Having picked up consecutive boundaries courtesy of tickles down the leg side off Umesh Yadav, who was clearly of the belief that this line of attack revealed a glimmer of a previously unseen vulnerability, Smith seemed unconcerned when a leg slip was employed.

Unconcerned, or simply unaware.

Because two Yadav deliveries after Ajinkya Rahane was stationed there, the skipper repeated the shot that had proved so productive in an otherwise impenetrable field setting, and turned just in time to see the ball disappear into the waiting fielder’s hands.

Smith’s departure and that of Rogers shortly after – cruelly undone by a delivery that squeezed its way between bat and pad and on to his middle stump – meant the responsibility of guiding Australia into safe harbour rested with Marsh.

And the bowlers.

That’s because the search for a long-term No.6 that has been ongoing since Michael Hussey was bumped up the order – and has included names such as North, Bailey and Mitchell Marsh (comfortable in the role until he was injured) and even Smith who averaged 25 in 14 starts there – remains inconclusive.

While Joe Burns’ returns on debut of 13 and nine could not be judged as abject failures, the manner of his dismissal in each innings – cutting too close to his body, pulling too close to his body, caught behind both times – frustrated nobody more than the 25-year-old himself.

Not that the Australians had cause to bemoan much.

If India was to forge a path back into a series they trail by two Tests with one to play, today’s first hour was to be integral.

A quick 30 or 40 runs, a marginal differential on the first innings and the chance to take the new ball against an opening batsman nursing a badly bruised front arm represented a chance – albeit an outside one – of chasing a realistic final-day target.

That plan lay pretty much in tatters within a couple of minutes of play getting underway.

For the second time in as many second balls of the day, India surrendered a wicket, and by the time the Monday morning stragglers settled into their seats and swigged a soy latte to quell the chill of a grey day, the players were replaced in the middle by a heavy pitch roller.

It took Mitchell Johnson – wicketless from all but one of the 122 deliveries he sent down the previous day – just eight deliveries to remove what remained of the Indian tail.

Although to be fair, the way India’s Test batting has evolved over the past year it could no longer be classified as a tail of any substance.

More vestigial than functional.

Indeed, when Umesh Yadav (0) and Mohammed Shami (12) fell within the first 10 minutes this morning it completed yet another Indian tail of woe.

Having been batted into a position of comparative strength by century makers Virat Kohli and Rahane in their fourth-wicket stand of 262, the fall of the latter triggered a free-fall with Shami the top scorer among those who followed as the tourists lost 7-59.

Since the beginning of this series and stretching back to the disastrous back end of their previous tour of England, India’s inability to score runs through the middle and lower order has been something of a revelation.

While Australia have only twice been bowled out (first innings in Brisbane and Melbourne), on the three occasions they have required runs beyond the fall of their fifth wicket those non-specialists have averaged around 250 combined.

In India’s five completed innings of this series thus far, that average contribution from the second half has been not quite 78.

So while bowlers often bemoan they are handed the blame when it’s there to be apportioned, in this case it’s fair to surmise they haven’t delivered – with ball or bat.

Consequently, the lead that Australia took into this match’s second phase – which India looked likely to erase completely when they reached 3-409 in pursuit of 530 late yesterday – was a handy 65.

By lunch it had grown to 155 for the loss of Warner.

At the end of a final session extended to almost three hours to make up the 85 minutes lost to lunchtime rain, the lead was pushing towards that record 332, with three pesky lower-order wickets still required, and India’s slim chance that had beckoned earlier in the day had all but disappeared into the gathering evening gloom.