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Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane hit thrilling centuries to give India some hope despite a late-order collapse that left Australia slightly in front at the end of the third day’s play. You can follow the live scores of this fourth day of this third Test from the the MCG starting 10:30am local time.
When the play ended on the third day at the ‘G, India were still 68 runs behind Australia with just their nine, ten and jack remaining.
Even that looked highly unlikely when Cheteshwar Pujara fell to the second ball of the day and Murali Vijay lasted only another hour on the third day. It was at that stage India had lost three wickets and had just 147 on the board with Kohli being joined by Rahane.
With KL Rahul making his debut at six and the rest of the batting very iffy, the onus was on the aforementioned pair to get them as close as possible to the Australian score.
They did that and how!
There were aggressive centuries for both on a day they got at least one life apiece.
Rahane was dropped by Nathan Lyon off his own bowling before the second new ball was taken.
Kohli was rattled by a Mitchell Johnson throw that hit his calf when he was batting and responded with a play & a miss, an edge through gully and then a nick that was dropped by the first slip.
But once the pair got to their respective century, they exploded.
Rahane was particularly severe on Johnson and the pair carved out 27 runs off a two-over spell from the speedster.
With Josh Hazlewood not able to hold up a candle to his own performance in Brisbane, it was left to Ryan Harris and to an extent, Shane Watson to bring Australia back into the game.
But it was Lyon who first broke the 262-run stand for the fourth wicket by trapping Rahane in front of the stumps as he attempted a second sweep of that over.
This was followed by a brain-freeze of epic proportion by KL Rahul on debut and the quick wickets of MS Dhoni and R Ashwin as they looked to keep up with the run-rate for some reason unknown.
It was rather surprisingly the batting of Mohammad Shami that gave India some respite from the quick fall of wickets as he survived 24 balls till close but the dismissal of Kohli off the last ball of the day’s play gave Johnson something to cheer about.
What that also meant was that Australia have a good chance of going into their second innings with a lead of around 50 runs that should give them something to build on.
The weather forecast for Monday in the city isn’t great and that could lead to a few overs of play being lost but with 180 overs still remaining in the game, things still have the potential to get interesting.
You can follow the live score of the fourth day of this third Australia v India Test from 10:30am AEDT on Monday and post your comments in the section below.
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