There was a point, not long before tea, when anything seemed possible. Australia had a handy lead and were attempting to stretch it, but India and their supporters had hope. The crowd bubbled and shrieked, Virat Kohli conducting from the cordon, and the air was tense with potential. But then Steve Smith joined Marnus Labuschagne and together they muffled the crowd under a suffocating blanket knitted out of pure competence.
Labuschagne is so preternaturally calm that, next man in and padded up in Australia’s dressing room, he had actually been asleep until the crowd’s reaction to David Warner’s early dismissal roused the 28 year old from his slumber. He proceeded to play as if determined to wreak the most obvious form of revenge, by casting the very people who had woken him into stupor.
But throughout this had been a day of thrills and very literal spills, and just as the last drops of this intoxicating spirit seemed to be draining from the ground Smith caught a sniff. Without warning or reason he rushed at Ravindra Jadeja, thrashed his bat and miscued the ball high to his right, where Shardul Thakur ran round from point to take the catch.
Travis Head then spent a frantic 27 balls at the crease, including a wild sweep to deep midwicket where Umesh Yadav fumbled the ball over the rope, before fluffing a return catch to Jadeja.
Australia had spent the first two days constructing a fearsome carapace and on the third it crumbled – and revealed a spinning disco ball underneath. They stand at 123 for four overnight, their lead already 296, but India are still dreaming of a victory dance.
“In finals you never know who will handle the pressure,” said Thakur. “One good partnership and you can chase down 450, maybe more than that. It’s too early to make predictions.”
The morning was fascinating, chaotic, a little wild. It started with Scott Boland bowling KS Bharat with a beautiful delivery, the second of the day, to reduce India to 152 for six. It felt like a precursor to another period of Australian dominance, a few quick lower-order wickets before they remorselessly batted the game out of India’s reach. But Thakur and Ajinkya Rahane had a different storyline in mind.
There were periods when the most active participant was India’s physio, both batters having to deal with repeated blows. Rahane did not field in the afternoon as he nursed a sore finger – “painful but quite manageable,” he said later – and Thakur criticised a pitch that has offered variable bounce from the start as “underprepared”.
The same suddenly seemed true of their opponents. By lunchtime three catches had been dropped, a review wasted and Thakur had been given lbw off what turned out to be a no-ball. Rahane had also survived a review, saved by the on-field decision with the ball destined to clip the outside of leg stump: Australia could not catch a break, or anything else.
Eventually the batters settled into their work. Immediately after that lbw review Rahane hit a pair of boundaries, the second a gorgeous cover drive.
Cummins, who on Thursday had Rahane lbw off a no-ball on 17, was the frustrated man again when Thakur was reprieved. By lunch it was 260 for six and you could almost see the steam jetting from Cummins’ ears. “We made a bit of a meal of it in the morning,” Labuschagne deadpanned.
Green, whose reputation as a fielder is as fearsome as his physique, had been guilty of the worst of the morning drops but made amends moments after the resumption by holding a wonderful diving catch to dismiss Rahane, finally, for 89. Green cuts a remarkable figure when simply standing at gully – a giant among men, an oak among apples – and flying to his right, arm outstretched, needed only the addition of a cape to appear genuinely superhuman. There are very few people for whom that chance would have been remotely catchable.
Thakur creamed 10 runs off a Cummins over to bring up his half-century but fell for 51 and a brief comedic interlude, half of the Australian team having already left the field by the time Mohammed Siraj was shown to have edged the ball into his pads before he was given lbw, delayed the conclusion of the innings only briefly.
The forecast for the weekend is hot and so, for now, is this contest. Mitchell Starc seemed excited by the prospect of more fine weather, trilling that “a bit of sunshine on that wicket and it might play a few more tricks”.
The batters of both sides will be wincing at the thought.
