Poor start has Aussies in mire
Australia had two early setbacks yesterday in their second innings as they fought to save the second cricket test against India at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Joe Burns (4) and Marnus Labuschagne (28) were out for Australia. The home side had reached 65-2 and face a difficult task to make enough runs to set India a challenging fourthinnings target.
Trailing by 131 runs on the first innings, Australia lost Burns in the fourth over, after the nervous opener was caught behind off the bowling of Umesh Yadav. Burns, who made a duck in the first innings, faces a battle to retain his place in the side for the third test.
Yadav limped off with an apparent leg injury midway through his fourth over, depleting India’s bowling attack.
Debutant Mohammed Sirjaj, who took over from Yadav, trapped Labuschagne in front of the stumps on 24.
A confident appeal for lbw was turned down and a video review found the ball may have just clipped the stumps, meaning the umpire’s original decision would stand.
Labuschagne fell on 28, however, when he was caught at slip off the bowling of spinner Ravi Ashwin.
India were bowled out just before lunch for 326, losing their last three wickets for one run.
Stand-in skipper Ajinkya Rahane was run out for 112. Rahane and Ravindra Jadeja (57) had steered India to a firstinnings advantage with their 121-run partnership for the sixth wicket.
Rahane, 32, calmly soaked up the pressure applied by Australia’s bowlers in his patient, 223-ball knock, hitting 12 boundaries.
India are without their best batsman and captain Virat Kohli for the rest of the series, after he returned home to be with his wife
for the birth of their first child. Kohli left with India trailing 1-0 in the four-match series after an eight-wicket loss in Adelaide, where the tourists were bowled
out for a national-record low of 36 in their second innings. – AP