New Delhi, Feb 18 () Ravichandran Ashwin and Axar Patel have managed to keep India afloat in the second session of Day Two in the second Test at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Saturday. At tea, India were 179/7 in 62 overs, trailing Australia by 84 runs.
Ashwin and Axar are unbeaten on 11 and 28 respectively, with their stand currently at 40 off 67 balls. It was a session in which India lost Ravindra Jadeja, Virat Kohli and K.S Bharat while Australia off-spinner Nathan Lyon took a five-fer and crossed the 100 Test wickets mark against the hosts’.
The session began with Kohli and Jadeja taking India to 100 in 39.3 overs. While Kohli was patient, showed solid footwork and rotated the strike well, Jadeja was solid in defence and drove off Murphy while clipping off Lyon for boundaries.
After Kohli found an outside edge going past slip for four off Murphy, he danced down the pitch to chip the drive over mid-on for four. But the 59-run partnership came to an end as Murphy trapped Ravindra Jadeja plumb in front with an off-break delivery coming in with the arm. Jadeja took the review, but replays showed the ball hitting the middle stump.
Kohli went on to pull Murphy through square leg. But in the next over, Kohli became Kuhnemann’s maiden Test wicket when he was rapped in front of the middle stump. With his bat and pad so close to meeting the ball at the same time, TV umpire Richard Illingworth concluded the ball hit the pad first and retained the on-field call as ball tracking showed the umpire’s call, resulting in Kohli falling six runs short of his fifty.
KS Bharat began with a reverse sweep off Lyon. But three balls later, the off-spinner had the last laugh by having Bharat go for the sweep early and lobbed off the glove to slip running backwards, giving Lyon his five-fer.
Ashwin began by punching twice against Kuhnemann off backfoot. Axar, on the other hand, got going with a straight drive off Cummins, followed by drilling a drive over Kuhnemann’s head.
On the very next ball, Axar slog-swept him over deep mid-wicket for six and when Cummins dropped short and wide, he was quick in hammering the cut past point.
In the final over before tea, Axar cracked a cut off backfoot through the offside against Kuhnemann, as his partnership with Ashwin reached 40 at tea.
Earlier, Lyon ran through the Indian top order, taking out KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara and Shreyas Iyer.
Brief scores: Australia 263 lead India 179/7 in 62 overs (Virat Kohli 44, Rohit Sharma 32; Nathan Lyon 5-41, Todd Murphy 1-37) by 84 runs
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