Adelaide memories keep Aussies cautious

Should Australia's success-starved Test team think that a win inevitably awaits them at Perth Stadium tomorrow, their memories from a week ago should effectively deflate any danger of premature exhilaration.

When the previous Test of the four-game Domain Series against India entered the final day at Adelaide Oval, the world's top-ranked Test outfit was similarly fancied to complete a result that most believed was already foregone.

After all, the Adelaide pitch had proved a challenge throughout for batters from both teams, and the reality that Australia's top-order had crumbled against a combination of seam and spin on the fourth evening left them needing 219 runs to win with six wickets available.

An assignment they very nearly pulled off, with some unexpected tail-end resistance combining with an escalating sense of panic among the highly fancied bowling team to carry Australia within 32 runs of triumph, before their brave bid ultimately failed.

Come day five in Perth tomorrow, the equation before India is not dissimilar.

Their best batters, including skipper Virat Kohli, have no further part to play, and the pitch is expected to make wickets a more regular occurrence than boundaries.

Yet at 5-112 needing 287, India are not yet on the canvas.

And they have a few key performance indicators at hand to buoy them, as inexperienced but unbeaten pair Hanuma Vihari (24 not out) and Rishabh Pant (9 not out) resume the chase.

Among them is the salient observation by Australia seamer Josh Hazlewood that, among the starkly fickle characteristics betrayed by the Perth pitch, is a curious tendency to be best for batting in the first session of each day.

As was the case on day one, when Australia's openers Marcus Harris and Aaron Finch put together a century stand, and again today as Usman Khawaja and skipper Tim Paine survived the full session while barely offering a genuine chance.

It's just one of the vagaries of the Test strip that has regularly given an impression of becoming unplayable, only to calm down and live up to the reputation of pre-fabricated pitches, known to be benign more often than belligerent.

"You see patches where it (the ball) is flying around and hitting the cracks, and then for a period it will go pretty quiet and be manageable to bat," Hazlewood said at day's end.

"The morning sessions seem like they're a little bit better for batting, - I'm not sure why, and then as the day goes on the cracks might reappear.

"It's an interesting one with the drop-in wicket as well.

"If you compare it to (Perth's former Test venue) the WACA - which is not a drop-in and where the cracks just get bigger and bigger - these (cracks) have appeared pretty early, and haven't widened too much.

"It's definitely different.

"I think (it's a good wicket), that's from a bowler's point of view.

"But we've seen hundreds as well, and quite a few guys getting fifties, and it's gone into the fifth day.

"I think it's exciting that things can happen at any stage throughout the day, and it's pretty competitive with bat and ball."

As one of those tailenders who carried Australia within sight of an improbable win at Adelaide – and as the last man to fall, crushing his team's distant hope of the win that has eluded them since the disastrous South Africa series last March – Hazlewood is understandably cautious.

He admits that his team still has a sizeable job ahead of them, even if the removal of either Vihari or Pant in the problematic morning session means India's batting reserves comprise four card-carrying fast bowlers with limited batting acumen.

But that was a similar scenario to Adelaide last week, when recognised batter Travis Head fell in the day's first half-hour yet the innings was not completed until the stroke of tea.

The degree of difficulty for Australia's bowlers might also be heightened by the knowledge that India's remaining batters are all right-handers, and Hazlewood believes they are not as susceptible to the pitch's vicissitudes as their left-handed colleagues.

Which became an issue for Australia, which has six southpaws in its current line-up.

"I think right-armers around the wicket to left-handers, there's more cracks on offer," he said tonight.

"I feel that when I'm bowling to the right-handers, it's a bit more like a normal wicket, there's not as many cracks there or (the ball going) up and down.

"But from time to time it jumps around, and then it can calm down."

What lies beyond speculation is the redemptive benefits that a win would bring an Australia team that has had its reputation bruised by events in South Africa, and its on-field swagger severely hobbled.

The manner in which skipper Paine stood tall in the face of rival captain Virat Kohli's trademark passion and aggression gave a clear indication that, while their collective nature might have changed, Australia's will-to-win remains undiminished.

That self-belief can only compound if they complete victory against the top-ranked Test team, and in circumstances that have kept this Test on a knife-edge from the time the pitch first bared its dark side after lunch on day one.

However, Hazlewood notes that the winless run that stretches back to the second Test against South Africa at Port Elizabeth - and includes the two-game series against Pakistan in the UAE that ended 0-1 – features only one defeat on home turf.

Where Australia has been ruthlessly dominant for much of the past three decades, regardless of the coming and going of champion players through retirement, injury and (most recently) suspension. 

"The feeling's good, and we're pretty excited to come back tomorrow," Hazlewood said.

"There's a bit of work to be done – we've just got to stay disciplined and patient, hit the right areas and five wickets is what we need.

"It's been a bit of a long time between wins … but any time I'm playing in Australia, with the Australian cricket team, we feel pretty confident.

"Especially the bowlers feel very confident in getting twenty wickets and getting a result.

"As we saw last year (in the Ashes win over England), we got home four times out of five.

"So we're feeling pretty confident of putting that into practice more often than not this summer."

A similar degree of measured expectancy that India took into the final day at Adelaide.

Domain Test Series v India

Dec 6-10: First Test, Adelaide Oval, India won by 31 runs

Dec 14-18: Second Test, Perth Stadium

Dec 26-30: Third Test, MCG

Jan 3-7: Fourth Test, SCG

Australia squad: Tim Paine (c, wk), Josh Hazlewood (vc), Mitch Marsh (vc), Pat Cummins, Aaron Finch, Peter Handscomb, Marcus Harris, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Nathan Lyon, Shaun Marsh, Peter Siddle, Mitchell Starc, Chris Tremain

India squad: Virat Kohli (c), Murali Vijay, KL Rahul, Prithvi Shaw, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Hanuma Vihari, Rohit Sharma, Rishabh Pant (wk), Parthiv Patel (wk), Ravi Ashwin, Ravi Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar