Smith, who scored a top-class century in difficult conditions in the second innings in Pune, is batting on 80.
Australia captain Steve Smith made the most of the batting conditions to help himself to another half-century and making known his profound love for the Indian bowling attack. Smith, who scored a top-class century in difficult conditions in the second innings in Pune, was batting on 80 as Australia went in to tea on the first day of the third Test at the JSCA International Stadium at 194/4.
Smith kept the run rate ticking along with first Pete Handscomb, him of the Bengaluru Test, where he asked his captain to seek dressing room help for DRS in Bengaluru that got into a major controversy, and later with comeback man Glenn Maxwell, playing his fourth Test and first in 28 months.
Smith stitched two separate 50-run partnerships, first with Handscomb and later with Maxwell and in the process reached a personal milestone of 5,000 runs in Test cricket, coming in his 53rd game when he reached 76*.
If Smith could come good to score on a dusty Pune pitch, he will not miss out on a chance to score on a good pitch here. So much was expected of the pitch that Smith feared the bounce would be low. However, to the contrary, the ball was nicely coming on to the bat and made batting easy.
Smith was majorly responsible in helping Australia safely through this session. Even though Australia lost Handscomb for 19, the only wicket to fall in the second session after resuming at the lunch score of 109/3, the visitors took the session’s honours.
Spinners bowled a majority of the overs with most of them being operated from the southern end of the stadium, the end from which Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja took a wicket each in the pre-lunch session. There was not much turn on offer for the spinners to look dangerous. Whatever turn was there was negotiated safely by Smith and Maxwell, who was very quiet in his comeback Test.
The only success for India, and a crucial one, came when that man Umesh Yadav trapped Handscomb plumb in front with a yorker-length delivery that crashed into the right-hander’s toe. India made an unsuccessful DRS in this session when Ishant Sharma’s shout for LBW against Glenn Maxwell, who was on 16, was turned down by Chris Gaffaney. It turned out that Sharma had overstepped the crease. Even if he had not, the ball seemed to be missing the leg-stump.
Australia may have scored only 85 runs in this session in 30 overs, 24 less than what they scored in the first session in the same number of overs, but the important aspect for them was that their captain Steve Smith was at the crease leading from the front and that they lost only one wicket, as against three in the morning session.
Brief scores:
Australia 1st innings: 194 for four in 60 overs (Steve Smith batting 80, Matthew Renshaw 44; Umesh Yadav 2/54).
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