Gritty half-centuries from Usman Khawaja and Peter Handscomb guided Australia to a fighting 263 all out on Day 1 of the 2nd Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
Batting on Day 2, Team India hoped to reach the total without losing many wickets. Team India openers, Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul, gave a decent start to the team. But both of them got dismissed for 32(69) and 17(41) respectively.
After the fall of these wickets, Cheteshwar Pujara, who is playing his 100th Test, got out on a duck, and Shreya Iyer, who is making a comeback to the team after injury, also got dismissed at just 4 runs.
After that, it was Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja’s responsibility to take India to a big score. Both of them looked solid on the crease. But a turner from Todd Murphy got Jadeja before the stumps and dismissed him at a score of 26 runs. Virat Kohli, on the other hand, got dismissed at a score of 44 runs due to a controversial LBW decision.
India’s innings was about to collapse while they were trailing by almost a 100 runs. However, Axar Patel and Ravichandran Ashwin took the charge and built a solid 100-run partnership to guide India to a total of 262 runs. Nathan Lyon took 5 wickets in the innings.
Axar Patel: 74(115)
Ravichandran Ashwin: 37(71)
Nathan Lyon: 5/67
Australian batsmen came to bat with a lead of 1 runs from the previous innings. Star of the 1st innings, Usman Khwaja, got dismissed at just 6 runs due to a brilliant catch taken by Shreyas Iyer. However, Travis Head, who is opening in place of David Warner, and Marnus Labuschagne made some fiery attacks on the Indian bowlers and took their score to 61/1 at the end of Day 2.
Travis Head: 39(40)
Marnus Labuschagne: 16(19)
