Ahead of the first unofficial Test against against Australia A in Chennai, India A coach Rahul Dravid called for quick, bouncy tracks to challenge the batsmen but instead, the first match served up a slow, low pitch. The track on the first day of the second game was livelier and the first ball of the day summed it up as Gurinder Sandhu extracted excellent carry to Matthew Wade. The challenge was on.
The opportunity beckoned and it was the visitors who grabbed it, bowling India A out for 135 in 68.5 overs. The left-arm spinners, Steve O'Keefe and Ashton Agar dismantled the top and middle order, claiming combined figures of 29-8-53-4 before Sandhu made light work of the tail in a spell that read 7.5-2-15-3.
Coming together at 53 for 4, Karun Nair and Naman Ojha mounted the lone source of resistance for India A, grinding 56 runs in 197 balls for the fifth wicket. The pair patiently left balls outside off, blocked resolutely, nudged the ball into the gaps and played out a wicket-less second session. Agar and O'Keefe plugged away, Sandhu swapped pace for offbreaks for an over, and Andrew Fekete attacked the body from around the wicket with a 5-4 leg-side field, but Naman and Karun blunted them.
Naman, who celebrated the fifty partnership by swat-pulling an Agar half-tracker to the cow-corner boundary, seemed to have loosened the shackles after being bogged down by a clump of dots. It was his first four in 80 balls. However, it turned out to be a false dawn.
Four balls later, Naman raced down the track only to be beaten in flight as Wade helped himself to a stumping. Naman's painstaking 144-minute stay had yielded only 10. Karun then fell for 50, tamely chipping a Fekete ball to square leg, which he later described as a "lapse in concentration."
Fekete had begun well, too, having the openers - Cheteshwar Pujara and Abhinav Mukund - ducking and swaying with the new ball. Pujara and Mukund saw through the first 10 overs, adding 18 runs before Marcus Stoinis struck with his very first ball, an off-cutter that beat Pujara's defences to hit the top of middle.
Enter Virat Kohli. The MA Chidambaram Stadium, which had a decent turnout, roared. It grew louder when India's Test captain skipped down the track and launched O'Keefe into the sightscreen in the 16th over. However, the crowd was soon hushed into silence when Agar caught Kohli in the crease with an arm ball and trapped him in front for a 42-ball 16. Four balls later, Shreyas Iyer was undone by an O'Keefe ripper that pitched on middle and leg and spun sharply with some extra bounce to tilt the off-stump back.
If Kohli's wicket was reward for accurate bowling after O'Keefe and Agar had strung together 14 consecutive dots, then Iyer's wicket was a confidence-booster for Agar, who was playing his first competitive game since March after being sidelined by a shoulder injury.
In stark contrast to the hosts' approach, Australia A openers Cameron Bancroft and Usman Khawaja began positively, shaving 43 off the deficit in 13 overs before stumps. Varun Aaron was off-radar, slinging four no-balls while Pragyan Ojha did not get much bite. The India A bowlers will have to step up on the second day if they are to mask the batting failure and pull their side back into the game.
(espncricinfo)
