Putting behind the batting blues of the opening day, India came back strongly to gain firm control over the Perth Test against Australia with openers Yashasvi Jaiswal and K L Rahul taking the first-innings lead of 46 – earned through a Jasprit Bumrah fifer – and stretched it past 200 by the end of the second day’s play at the Optus Stadium on Saturday.
With the sun beating down on the Optus Stadium pitch, and the seam movement that proved nightmarish for the batters over the first two innings of the match becoming manageable, Jaiswal and Rahul took India to 172 for no loss, effectively 218 for no loss, thus becoming the first Indian pair in 20 years to add a 100-run stand for the first wicket in Test cricket in Australia.
The duo needs another 20 runs to beat Sunil Gavaskar and Krish Srikkanth’s record stand of 191 achieved in Sydney in January 1986. Jaiswal closed in on a brilliant century and finished 90 not out, while a resolute Rahul was unbeaten on 62 as India stretched their lead to 218 runs.
Unlike the first day when seventeen wickets fell, and three more this morning as Australia’s lower order added 37 to their overnight score of 67 for 7, the Indian openers preferred to set a sedate tempo, and deny any luxury for the home bowlers all day, over 57 overs.
Jaiswal reached his half-century off 123 balls – his slowest 50 of his short Test career – and Rahul registered his in 124 deliveries. Australia failed to take their chances with Jaiswal having a let off on 51 when he edged Mitchell Starc only for Usman Khawaja to drop a tough chance low down at first slip. There was a missed run out opportunity on the next delivery when Rahul backed up too far, but the openers regrouped to continue India’s remarkable turnaround.
Having failed to open his account in his first Test innings in Australia, the 22-year-old Jaiswal beat all jitters in the second innings, and looked compact with his defence right from the word go. The southpaw benefited from Rahul’s calming influence, in the middle as the left-right batting duo ran well between the wickets, scurrying risk-free singles, to rattle the home side.
Continuing from where he left in the first innings after being controversially given caught behind by DRS, Rahul was happy to play the anchor’s role, when Jaiswal gradually started playing some audacious shots, including the uppercut against Pat Cummins over the slips before swatting Starc over deep square leg. Late in the day he skipped down at Nathan Lyon to deposit the off-spinner into the stands over long-on.
Australia’s pace attack lacked the sting on the second day, more perhaps due to a psychological effect that they weren’t prepared to return to bowl so quickly, and on a wicket that appeared to flatten amid sunny conditions, with Cummins happy to use seven bowlers, including Marnus Labuschagne, who unsuccessfully unfurled his short-ball strategy for a couple of overs.
Earlier, Australia were bowled out by lunch for 104 — their fourth lowest score against India in Tests and ninth lowest at home since 1900. India’s stand-in captain Jasprit Bumrah, who rattled the home side with his brilliance on day one, capped off his five-wicket haul with the wicket of overnight batter Alex Carry in the second over of Saturday. It was Bumrah’s 11th five-wicket haul in Test cricket and ninth while playing outside of Asia, the joint-most by an Indian alongside Kapil Dev.
Debutant Harshit Rana, who opened the bowling with Bumrah on Saturday, was rewarded for his hostile spell with the scalp of Nathan Lyon with a sharp bouncer that caught the glove and ballooned to the slips cordon.
Reduced to 79 for 9, Australia were in danger of being dismissed for their lowest score against India and overtaking their infamous 83 in the MCG in 1981 before the other overnight batter in Mitchell Starc saved them from the blushes with a 26-run last wicket stand with Josh Hazlewood. That partnership, coming in 18 overs, was Australia’s highest of the innings.
Rana, who was engaged in a war of words with Starc, his former Kolkata Knight Riders teammate, following a barrage of bouncers aimed at the Aussie quick, had the last laugh as he eventually ended Starc’s vigil just before the lunch interval. Starc top-scored for the Aussies with 26 after facing 112 deliveries.
With the match now heading to the third day, and cracks gradually appearing on the surface, thanks to a predicted high of around 34 degrees on Sunday, the Indians will look to stretch their lead past 300, considering Perth has witnessed nine fourth-innings scores of 300 or more, and all of those – including South Africa’s successful chase of 414 in 2008 – have come at the WACA and not this ground, but both grounds have identical soil composition and weather conditions.