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A debut five-wicket haul from Todd Murphy wasn’t enough to stop India surging to a hefty first-innings lead on Day 2 of the first Test in Nagpur.
Murphy, a 22-year old Victorian off-spinner who completed a whirlwind rise from Northern Territory club cricket to the Test team on Thursday, was far and away the pick of a star-studded Australian attack.
Without his unerring accuracy and canny spin, India’s total of 7/321 at stumps, a lead of 144, would have looked even bleaker for the tourists.
As it stands, they have a Herculean task ahead of them to so much as make a game of this Test, especially with Matt Renshaw spending time off the field with a knee injury, though he did send down a rare over late in the day.
As it was late on Day 1, Rohit Sharma was the chief destroyer for the Indians, the captain dispatching anything short or wide to reach his ninth Test century.
It took the ball of the day to remove him, Sharma’s off stump sent flying by a cracking delivery from Pat Cummins – small revenge from the sizeable hammering he had received from his opposite skipper up until then.
Australia would have hoped for a narrow first-innings deficit when Sharma fell at 6/229; instead, they would endure a torrid final few hours of the day, as India’s menacing lower order feasted on a tired attack to send the first-innings lead hurtling towards 150.
As he was with the ball on Day 1, Ravindra Jadeja enhanced his reputation as Australia’s chief nemesis, defying conditions meant to be anathema to left-handers to play an innings of serious substance with only occasional flashes of his usual flair in compiling an unbeaten 66 from 170 balls.
Together with Axar Patel (52 not out), whose sizeable first-class average of above 32 makes him one of the best number nines going around, the two southpaws put on an unbroken 81 for the eighth wicket, with Murphy finally fatiguing after a marathon day and Nathan Lyon handled with ease.
Adding insult to injury, Steve Smith shelled a sharp chance at slip off the second-last ball of the day to spare Jadeja; the sort of catch that simply needs to be taken in the plight the Australians find themselves in.
But the real story of the day was Murphy, who added the wickets of Ravichandran Ashwin, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli and KS Bharat to his Day 1 scalp of KL Rahul. As far as debut five-fors go, the names could hardly have been bigger.
He had luck – two of his wickets were LBWs successfully reviewed after on-field not out calls, while Kohli somehow contrived to strangle his worst ball of the day down leg to a gleeful Alex Carey.
With nightwatchman Ashwin, batting for the first time in his career in the top five but owner of five Test centuries, looking obdurate as ever, Murphy beat the inside edge with a sharply turning off break. Given not out, Australia’s call for the DRS proved wise, the ball found to be crashing into leg stump.
When Pujara fell shortly after for 7 to an unusually loose paddle sweep popped straight to fine leg, Murphy had all three of Australia’s scalps – and when Kohli got a feather through to Carey down the leg side, it was four for four.
Lyon, who looked just as unthreatening to the Indian batters as he did during a nightmare home series in 2020/21, broke his new spin partner’s run with comfortably his best ball of the day, a fizzing off break that cleaned up Suryakumar Yadav through the gate.
When Murphy again benefitted from a successful review to have Bharat trapped in front for 8, the lead was just 63 and an Aussie fightback looked distinctly possible. Jadeja and Patel have since all but snuffed out those faint hopes.
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