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Despite a washed-out day one limiting the game to four days and concerns swirling about Australia’s weakened team after the contentious decision to suspend four players, the third Test certainly entertained us with some great cricket being displayed.
When Australia won the toss and elected to bat, Australian supporters held their collective breath hoping that Australia would post a competitive total and hopefully go some way to turning around what has been a challenging series both on and off the field.
Cowan and Warner dug in on what seemed to be better batting track than the previous Tests, but when their opening stand was cut short at 139 and Clarke went first ball there was a sense of ‘here we go!’.
Fortunately for Australian fans, this Test had a few more plot twists to come and wasn’t going to play out the way the first two Tests had.
Part of people’s love affair with the game of cricket is the dynamic theatre the game constantly throws up.
Here we have Michael Clarke who is in the form of his life having amassed a trillion runs since he has taken over the captaincy.
After calls for him to bat up the order, he does so in this Test and what happens, a golden duck! Then we have Starc, batting at number nine, make 99.
The pleasing thing about the Australian innings from Clarke’s departure was how the players dug in, despite losing a few key batters for no score.
The famous Aussie fighting spirit that is synonymous with Australian culture was evident in Smith and Starc as they fought tooth-and-nail not to give their wicket away. Though this only made it more heart-breaking to see them fall just short of the maiden centuries they deserved.
But with their respective abilities I am sure both will achieve that milestone very shortly, if given the chance to hold their spots in the Test team over the coming months.
The Australians would have been pleased to have finally posted a reasonable first innings. However, I expect the mood would have changed considerably by late on day three.
The ascendency had swung back to the Indians with conviction. The Indian openers scored at a rate that most ODI teams would have been happy with, by finishing the day with 283 runs off 58 overs.
The hero of the day was the debutant Shikhar Dhawan, who came into the team after the Indian selectors decided to drop Sehwag.
Not only was Dhawan impressively strong on the off side, he scored at such quick rate that he wrote himself into the record books.
His century was the fastest by a debutant when he brought it up off 85 balls and his 185 was the highest Test score by an Indian debutant, which leads me to congratulate the selectors on being brave. I will come back to this point in my article next week.
Once Dhawan and Vijay’s (153) partnership was broken by Lyon, Australian work horse Siddle bowled his heart out (rewarded with a five-for), Starc got the new ball swinging and the wickets started crumbling.
If only they took the new ball straight away India may not have had such a big lead.
When Australia resumed its second innings we witnessed what we have seen in the first two tests, India piling the pressure on the Australian top order and the batters ultimately succumbing.
If it wasn’t for Hughes’ innings, with some support from Haddin and the lower order, the game may well and truly have been over without India batting.
That being said, even though Australia didn’t win or post the second innings total they would have hoped for, the Australian supporters saw some fight surface.
It had strangely been absent in the first two Tests and even when India needed around 40 runs off the last 10 over there was still hope that Australia could force a drawn game.
However, it seemed like Dhoni was teasing the Aussies of hope of a draw by playing and missing so many times before suddenly launching a few lusty blows to see Australia go three-nil down in the series.
So what are my thoughts on reflection of this Test and looking forward to the fourth Test. Although Australia has lost the series, an interesting chapter to the 2013 Border-Gavaskar series is shaping for the final Test, with the young Australian team displaying some important fight during the third.
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