India vs Australia 3rd Test, Day 2: 170 overs of toil for Australia

It vexed even the usually composed Lyon, who kept ranting at himself and the fielders. Paine kept shuffling his field. The chirps behind the stumps got louder, and Paine it seemed just wanted the ordeal to end as fast as possible. After a while he stopped changing his field. His troops, meanwhile, were drifting to their far-flung outposts, mechanically signing autographs and posing for selfies.

It was the only time the Australians looked flat. For much of the game, despite having to play catch-up, they were buoyant, probing, persistent and hopeful. They tried to make life difficult for the Indian batsmen, giving little away, keeping tight lengths and coming up with radical field placements. There was at one point a ‘silly-slip’, a third slip that stood closer to the batsman. What happens next? Virat Kohli’s edge split the vacant space between the second and third slip.

Things weren’t going their way. They edges either they fell short or eluded the fielders. Pat Cummins’s in-cutters – the scrambled seam helping to procure the extra bounce – repeatedly beat Kohli’s attempts to unshackle. But he just kept swishing the thin air. He made the ball kick up from back-of-length, but it would either hit the batsman’s fingers or helmet but would evade his glove and bat. They devised grand plans, like making Kohli drive and pushing the line away from him. The Indian skipper got sucked into the trap, but the miscue eluded Aaron Finch at point.

It was then that they laid the famous short-ball trap, which eventually succeeded. Kohli was caught at deep third man, his first dismissal in such fashion. But they could nothing against Pujara.

They tried everything. They bowled on his leg-stump with a web of catchers on leg-side but Pujara played most of the stokes along the ground. Sometimes he pierced the gap so surgically that Paine was forced to rethink.

But lucklessness didn’t deter them—the pacers, especially the seamers, barring the rusty Josh Hazlewood—pounded the ball as hard on the dead earth as they could. No one personified their tenacity as much as Cummins, who bowled with such hostile discipline that three wickets does little justice to his endeavours. Cummins isn’t the stereotypical Aussie instigator. Every time he beat the batsman—and he did beat Kohli’s outside several times this innings—he would simply smile back at them, as if saying “mate you’re lucky.”

No one personified Australia’s frustration than Lyon, who like Cummins bowled his heart out, but had to be content with Ajinkya Rahane’s wicket. So infuriated was he that he didn’t even bother to celebrate, not after picking a solitary wicket for 110 runs in a series wherein his standards have been lofty. When a television presenter asked, he screamed back: “There’s nothing, absolutely nothing in here.”

It was a weird pitch in many ways. While it was predominantly slow, it did throw up a few instances of variable bounce. But the lack of pace meant the batsman got enough time to adjust. While it was intrinsically low, a few balls just took off. On such a pitch, it was just an ordeal for the bowlers. Their only hope could be that it would be as agonising for the Indian bowers too.