Skipper Smith leading the way

With the man whose seat he is warming sitting in judgement in the commentary box, Steve Smith added another folio to the mounting evidence file already heavily stamped 'future of Australian cricket'.

On a day when the so-far frenetic speed at which the four-match Commonwealth Bank Test Series had been played slowed to a more recognisable speed of less than three runs per over bowled – perhaps in deference to the onset of holiday season – Smith once again stood tall.

He led his team from the time two wickets fell in consecutive overs mid-afternoon to the time they left the field bang on the scheduled time for stumps (with all 90 overs duly bowled) with a two-nil series lead in his keeping and the third match finely balanced at 5-259.

The 25-year-old is unbeaten on 72 and will have a fifth century of a revelatory year in his sights when the game resumes tomorrow, although India's seamers – who worked so hard to slow the rampant scoring today – will be armed with a ball less than 10 overs old.

Only Smith and Brad Haddin (23no) stand between the tourists and the tailenders, and the fact that Smith's innings soaked up 158 balls and almost three and a half hours underscores how hard he worked.

"He's phenomenal to watch and it's great to be a part of," opening batsman Chris Rogers said of his captain after stumps today.

"He's just growing day by day.

"It's scary to think how good he can be … he knows he belongs and he knows  he's among the best players in the world at the moment."

While he was not the only Australian batsman to make it to 50, he was the only one of them to kick on past that milestone and who has the chance to build even further on the start that he has made.

Another example of the increasing maturity he is bringing to the role he's grasped with such surety.

A fact certainly not lost on injured but incumbent captain Michael Clarke who was full of praise for his understudy during his debut as a Channel Nine commentator on Australian cricket's most auspicious day.

Earlier, Joe Burns had received Test cap number 441 from local hero and another former Australia captain Bill Lawry prior to play beginning, and the responsibility that came with it appeared to rest comfortably on his shoulders when he formally entered the Test arena for the first time shortly after tea.

A smooth cover drive for three to get him on the Test runs scorers list, a couple of nicely timed boundaries and a preparedness to get his head over the ball and look like the Test batsman he has the chance to become.

But half an hour into his career he aimed a cramped pull shot at Umesh Yadav and unluckily caught a bottom edge for 13.

That brought Haddin, who by his own concession continues to find himself a score or two short of surety for his Test place, in to face more than an hour of sustained leg theory as the Indians tried to exploit his apparent uncertainty against short-pitched bowling.

With India's quicks opting often to attack from around the wicket with catchers hovering nearby to snare any defensive fends, Haddin swayed inside the line, took a few on the body and nudged some away along the ground to survive until stumps.

The 23 he will resume on Saturday morning might not represent a definitive rebuttal to critics and confirmation for selectors, but it has ensured Australia starts day two in more comfort than they felt when the 37-year-old went to the crease at 5-216.

Although the gap between Tests thus far in the series has been but a few days, it is clear that India's coach Duncan Fletcher and his lieutenants have not been obsessed with their own charges over that time.

Having wrested back the initiative that Australia had seized in the wake of David Warner's scoreless departure, India found a way of quelling Smith's scoring even if they had not yet seemed to stumble of a means of getting him out.

By concentrating their attack on the stand-in Australian captain full and straight, and with field placings ensuring he would need to embrace risk if he was to try and maintain the frantic scoring rate of the series to date, Smith was subdued.

A solitary run from the first four overs he faced.

Almost as long again before he finally found the boundary.

The theory seemed to suggest that, given his comparative youth and propensity to create scoring shots where none traditionally exist, by tying him down they could claim his scalp.

But one of the hallmarks of Smith's remarkable, fast-tracked career has been his disregard for the theorists both with his unorthodox batting technique and his uncomplicated approach to the game.

So as the dot ball count continued to grow, the Australian skipper refused to twitch.

Well, no more than is customary between overs. Between deliveries. Between thoughts.

Having reached tea with a previously unimaginable 23 from 84 balls faced, Smith emerged from the break suggesting he had imbibed something more fortifying than an elderflower brew when he skipped down the pitch to Ravi Ashwin and lifted him over his head for six.

But if this was the signal for the counter-attack that the final session was ripe to yield, the plans were hastily redrafted when Shaun Marsh surrendered his innings just as he should have been reaping the rewards of his earlier diligent work.

As his captain was starting to do at the other end.

Prior to his recall to Test cricket in Brisbane a week or more earlier, Marsh had identified the work he had done on ensuring he was better mentally attuned from the moment he arrived at the crease.

It was a shortcoming he had attributed to the otherwise inexplicable run of single figure scores he has racked up in his Test career, and which contrast so sharply with the couple of centuries that stamp him as a batsman of world class.

It would seem that mental preparedness "early doors" is not restricted to the start of an innings, as Marsh – who had reached 32 in more fluent fashion than his skipper prior to tea – looked distinctly out of sorts immediately after.

The fourth ball he received from Mohammed Shami post-tea he appeared to lose balance as he walked into a short-arm jab to mid-on, and was similarly at sea next ball when he tried to execute a cut shot too close to his body and while rocking on to the front foot only to feather a bottom edge to the 'keeper.

By that stage, squandering a start had become the theme of the day.

After losing a coin toss that saw them consigned to the field staring a hard, bare pitch that suggested runs despite its reluctance to give them up, India struck immediately when Warner was squared up by a ball that lifted off a length and was well caught low at third slip for a duck.

While he had shown little evidence that the thumb injury he suffered when batting on the final day in Brisbane remained an issue, his instinctive response to the ball that claimed his wicket was one of understandable alarm.

But the tourists' dream start soon lapsed into some dozy fielding as runs were gifted and – shortly before lunch as the total neared 100 – Shane Watson was missed by Shikhar Dhawan at second slip having made 37.

When Watson and Chris Rogers made it to the first break with their wickets intact and then pushed their stand beyond 100 following the resumption it seemed the pitch was flattening out at the same rate as the spirit of India's bowlers and fielders.

But both were excised in the space of an over, immediately after their sense of comfort was disrupted by a near run-out where the pair briefly found themselves scampering in the same direction.

From the next delivery, Rogers was caught behind pushing at a ball that caught the outside edge completing his third consecutive score of 50 but not many more, and then Watson once again fell foul of his front pad, adjudged lbw when attempting to sweep Ravi Ashwin.

Television technology later showed it was a line-ball decision as to whether or not it would have struck off stump.

But the absence of DRS in this series only heightened the sense of opportunities lost as Watson trudged from the field with 52 to his name.

Australia: David Warner, Chris Rogers, Shane Watson, Steve Smith (capt), Shaun Marsh, Joe Burns, Brad Haddin, Mitchell Johnson, Ryan Harris, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood

India: Murali Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul, MS Dhoni (capt), Ravichandran Ashwin, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma