India in jeopardy inbetween rain breaks

 

Cummins bagged Pant for the third time in the series

India found themselves in the doldrums despite rains reducing play to just 30.2 overs over the first two sessions of the third day's play of the Brisbane Test. At the Tea interval, which was taken after yet another spell of showers, the visitors were tottering at 48 for 4 in response to Australia's first-innings total of 445.

India's batters weren't helped by the stop-start nature of the day's play that allowed Australia's seamers to rest and return fresh after each interval but Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, and Pat Cummins were also able to create more jeopardy out of the Gabba surface owing to their higher release points compared to the Indian quicks. That said, India shot themselves in the foot with some of their shot selection.

While Yashasvi Jaiswal fell the second ball of the innings after flicking a Starc delivery straight to the square leg, Shubman Gill and Virat Kohli were done in attempting booming drives without quite getting their balance right while moving forward. Gill was dismissed by Starc courtesy of a sharp, diving take at gully by Mitchell Marsh while Kohli fell in a rather familiar fashion when he drove loosely at a ball on the sixth stump from Josh Hazlewood.

Rain returned 11 balls at the start of the second session and then again after another 3.5 overs. Five balls into another restart, India lost Rishabh Pant when he poked at a length delivery from Pat Cummins angled across him. Between this batting crisis, KL Rahul got himself to 30* by playing a series of pleasing cover drives despite copping a painful blow to his left wrist early in his innings.

Even earlier, Australia added 40 runs to their overnight score of 405 in a little over an hour before India took the last of the three remaining wickets. After a five-minute delay to start proceedings because of rain, Alex Carey completed a 53-ball half-century with a well-swept boundary off Ravindra Jadeja. Starc swung a six and a four before nicking off against Jasprit Bumrah, giving India's bowling leader his sixth wicket of the innings. That also took Bumrah's Test tally in Australia to 50 wickets, a feat only Kapil Dev had achieved for India before.

The next 10 overs, either side of another 14-minute rain delay, brought only 22 runs with Australia happy to bide their time in a bid for a bat-once total. India spread their field out for Carey and used the period to manage Bumrah's workload, taking him off the attack after a three-over spell. Eventually, Mohammed Siraj bowled a full delivery. He breached Nathan Lyon's defences before Akash Deep had Carey caught at deep mid-wicket for 70 with a short ball for his only wicket at the end of 29.5 overs of toil.

Brief scores: India 48/4 (Mitchell Starc 2-24) trail Australia 445 (Travis Head 152, Steve Smith 101, Alex Carey 70; Jasprit Bumrah 6-76) by 397 runs.