T4; Sydney

First topic message reminder :

well there is hope now and life back in test cricket.
We drew T3 because of one act of postiivity on D5 of T1....by Kohli wanting to and nearly chasing down.
and that is what delayed Smith's declaration yesterday.

and Shastri said I don't care whether we go down 2-0 or 3-0........we will try to win....as defiant as one can get to Dhoni's ways......in the BCCI culture of gagged mouths.

India may ( and should) play 2 spinners.....throw Patel in, now that he has arrived and both spinners can bat a bit.

added cushion can come in the form of batsman WK Naman Ojha

so Patel for Rahul
Ojha for Dhoni
and if Bhuvi is fit then he is in for someone like shami

Steve Smith has as many hundreds in this series as Shane Watson does in his Test career. 

Also, he's 3/5 of the way to being as good a captain as Alastair Cook, who scored centuries in his first 5 games as skipper.

--there is considerable grief outpouring in nation from the "Dhoni Lovers" fuelled by CSK Propoganada machine......that are dissecting every session of Kohli's captaincy.....

--the latest grouse "look he picked the useless Dhoni favourites Rohit and Raina....and look he dropped Ishant and Pujara"

While Kohli's selection is not exactly how i would like them to be.......he would have his own logic or constrains...the only way of judging him is on results......over some period of time .....not as long as Dhoni's 60 tests...but in blocks of 5 tests and make a call to retain or move on after reviewing about 15 tests.

--Trivia through.....
Shami( picked over ishant) delievred his best overseas performance to date this game
Rahul( picked over Dhawan) delievred his best show of assuredness to date...and still going

and Rohit ain't too far from delivering his best overseas performance to date.....

trivia it is because in the end the results of the team is what will make or break the reputaion of team and future of the captain.

--On the game itself.....the par scenario is India will collapse sometime tomm , the first sessions satistically is when Indian batting seen most damage and will lag so far behind that the game will be a certain defeat.

--The outside chance is if they bat big and positive tomm... and the pitch is still OK...they would be within a 100 odd runs of Aus tomm....and then the various scenarios will start....

BUT a lot of positve mentality and a huge solid effort is required.....batting has more depth than ever before with Bhuvi at 9 and Shami not a bad no.10...

so if we are no more than 7 or 8 down end of tomm...then we can review scenarios.

Mitchell Starc took a wicket!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

However his send off was silly and really not needed..

Mohammed Shami certainly delivered enough of the good balls that he produces to take 5 wickets though this by no means was a consistent performance. But to sadly beyond the myth of his selection/non-selection/the dropping of Ishant, the story is that Ishant the medium pacer was not dropped but injured. Perhaps it will be a 'convenient injury' like the one Ravindra Jadeja seemingly picked up after the 2nd test all at the urging of Dhoni?

Anyways back to the game, the bowling as awful as ever though it was a bit more disciplined than on day one. The result is that Australia have a massive first innings score on the board that has ruled out an Indian win in all likelihood.
Then Murali Vijay, the batsman who fired consistently when the series was alive failing. FTB Sharma has made 40, has got a start, but unlike during moments when it matters, he's likely to go on and get a big one to the detriment of the side for the next year. Have noted Mike's comment above regarding my position on Sharma. Yes he hasn't played too many tests. But 9 isn't an insignificant sample size. Besides, there is enough ground to make assessments from an 8 year old international career where his temperament and technique came in for substantive questioning.

Glad for KL Rahul though. That start would hopefully have told him that he can score runs at this level. Certainly a relief after a horrendous start to his test career. Hopefully he'll go on to play a substantive innings.

The Indian fielding standards are just appalling, David Warner, Chris Rogers, Shane Watson, Shaun Marsh all benifiting significantly due to dropped chances. The much maligned Ravichandran Ashwin suffering in particular. The bowling unit as as such ordinary on these conditions, and if the fielging doesn't take the few chances they manage to create, India's overseas tests would all be about the batting unit firefighting and losing the cause eventually to better bowling most often.
Hope Virat Kohli, Ravi Shastri and whoever else in charge of the management, can address these issues. India had Kapil Dev in the 1980s, Javakal Srinath in the 1990s and Zaheer Khan in the 2000s. Where is a quality seamer of the decade going to come from? Bhuvneshwar Kumar isn't really there as non-swinging conditions negate him considerably though he still can keep things quiet. Varun Aaron, Umesh Yadav and Mohammed Shami aren't able to sustain consistency or fitness. Ishant Sharma, despite playing international cricket for 8 years and possessing solid physical attributes for a seam bowler, will never be that wickettaking attack leader. In conditions where spin won't be the decisive factor, without a wickettaking seamer, India will always struggle.
This will soon make Virat Kohli a defense first skipper. Hopefully he'll still be alert to the rare moments to take control, something that Dhoni couldn't often do, and hopefully the batting will acquire greater solidity and somewhat makeup for the horrendous bowling pack that we have got.

msp83 wrote:The Indian fielding standards are just appalling, David Warner, Chris Rogers, Shane Watson, Shaun Marsh all benifiting significantly due to dropped chances. The much maligned Ravichandran Ashwin suffering in particular. The bowling unit as as such ordinary on these conditions, and if the fielging doesn't take the few chances they manage to create, India's overseas tests would all be about the batting unit firefighting and losing the cause eventually to better bowling most often.
Hope Virat Kohli, Ravi Shastri and whoever else in charge of the management, can address these issues. India had Kapil Dev in the 1980s, Javakal Srinath in the 1990s and Zaheer Khan in the 2000s. Where is a quality seamer of the decade going to come from? Bhuvneshwar Kumar isn't really there as non-swinging conditions negate him considerably though he still can keep things quiet. Varun Aaron, Umesh Yadav and Mohammed Shami aren't able to sustain consistency or fitness. Ishant Sharma, despite playing international cricket for 8 years and possessing solid physical attributes for a seam bowler, will never be that wickettaking attack leader. In conditions where spin won't be the decisive factor, without a wickettaking seamer, India will always struggle.
This will soon make Virat Kohli a defense first skipper. Hopefully he'll still be alert to   the rare moments to take control, something that Dhoni couldn't often do, and hopefully the batting will acquire greater solidity and somewhat makeup for the horrendous bowling pack that we have got.

Msp - very much with all of that. You've probably seen me banging on about the fielding in earlier posts above.

Whilst I'm probably not as supportive of Ashwin as you or as taken with him as Mike was in the previous Test, I do like him. At face value, his return of 1/130 odd is pretty terrible but that overlooks how much of the legwork he got through keeping something of a grip on things and, as you say, how poorly he was served by his fielders. I still though feel he would be better suited as a useful cog in a 5 man attack than as such a vital piece of machinery in a quartet.

Realistically, things couldn't have gone much better for Australia yesterday. All the top 6 going past fifty and an Indian wicket before the close. Just from the Sky highlights, I liked the look of Burns. Clearly nervous and uncomfortable before lunch but he survived and then in the afternoon session he really blossomed with a fine awareness as to where the fielders were or, rather, where they weren't.

Guildford, Ashwin is not relly in the top league of spinners that the Indian tradition stands for. But he's a match winner in home conditions, and his away performances have improved in recent games. My support for him is not so much about him being a great spinner, but about him being and improved bowler who hasn't been getting due credit, and also about the hype that people associate with the likes of Akshar Patel who is similar to another maligned left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja who isn't a bad bowler really. Ashwin struggled in his first tour of Australia though he did better than what Harbhajan had managed there till then, and he was absolutely godawful in South Africa. But after losing his place and then coming back into the side, he has done a decent job.

yadav, Aaron, Shami and Ishant are top class potential.
Bhuvi with rest and recuperation will be world class.
Reserves include Pandey, sandeep, possibly Shardul.


Problems in NOT in bowling talent......they have been conditioned to bowl with an ODI / T20 menatlity for a Long long time by Dhoni.

Our bowling was really high quality when Kirsten was the coach, and Prasad the bowling coach and Robin the fielding coach.

Kirsten left, Dhoni won the world cup and became the " Badaa Sahib" and fired Venky Prasad and Robin singh who probably still treated him like the young dhoni and not deferential enuf as the Badaa sahab would have liked.

and got all yes-men....who weren't competent enuf either especially across language and culture barriers.

The king wasn't competent himself and surrounded himself with yes-men cabinet and king makers were happy collecting bounties from T20 and Meaningless Masala ODis and also busy annexing empires in the realms of ICC.....and so the test team declined.

Coach change is due.....and Kohli will defnitely be better than Dhoni but bear in mind dhoni still is the limited over captain and the one who will choose the coaches if he stays.

and if he takes Ind into semis of the world cup, he will stay on.
However if there is an earlier exit, the media and fans will hound and chase him out.

indian captains rarely have survived a world cup debacle....1987-Kapil ( inspite of making it to semis), 1996 Azhar, 2007 Dravid.
Only Azhar survived the 1993 debacle.

So this WCup will be either the joy of making it to semis or the consolation of Dhoni being fired from ODIs also

Thanks, msp. My knowledge of the current situation is nothing compared to your's but that seems a realistic and understandable assessment.

Btw, I've been trying very hard not to make comparisons with India's spinners of more than forty years ago!

I do agree with KPf that Limited overs are too blame for the Indians complete inability to grasp test cricket. At least in part. Kohli couldn't wait a plan out if the rewards weren't immediate. He himself is guilty if constructing big innings, and when he did, they came very fast, which isn't always the best thing in test cricket (Memories of South Africa scoring nearly 500 in less than four sessions against England only to be completely batted out still hold). This isn't a bad Indian team, in fact talent wise I'd say it's up there, but concept of time is king in Test cricket, which is how a team can score 400+ in three successive tests and still find themselves 2-0 down.

Raf - I take your point and entirely agree that a side needs to understand how to pace and time an innings in Test cricket.

However, as Australia and, in particular, Warner and Smith, have shown recently, there can be undoubted benefits in moving the game on with intelligent aggressive batting. That's not to say India need to learn the art of patience first.

The difference though has been Aussie tail extending those innings' and pumping runs themselves. Let's not forget that even with a rapid Smith hundred Australia would have been staring down the barrel of a massive deficit, and a lot of overs had Johnson and Co not all scored huge in the second test. Similar story in the last test.

I would also say I'm not advocating batting slowly for the sake of it, I never do, I mean my favourite test player of all, Gilchrist scored at 80 per 100. But a guy like Kohli has only one century over 150, and that's because he knows only one gear when he's in 100 form. Be has no clue on how to slow it down again and really press home the advantage (tbh neither does Warner) and that's because these guys make their graduations to the Test squad from ODI cricket, and not first class. The upshot is they know the quality of the bowling they will face, but now they don't know how to cash in. How to bat after sixty overs, how to reign it in when the second new ball arrives.

Only problem raf, is that Australia have scored 500+ in 4 consecutive Tests now and it could perhaps be argued that they should be 3-0 up.

Yesterday reminded me of the last time India were in town. As the day progressed and the runs piled on there seemed to be almost a comical reaction from the crowd. It was not really a test. Kumar looked fairly ordinary all day and Raina was pretty ineffectual with the ball.

Watson again failed to capitalise and was drawn into another poor shot... his limited strokeplay (almost always to midwicket!) "finding him out" yet again. Even in those near perfect conditions against that attack he never looked completely comfortable.

Smith, on the other hand, looks as smooth as silk as he made his 4th hundred in the series. Best batsman in the world by a long shot at the moment. Kane Williamson and Kohli not far behind.  

Shami's 5-fer was perhaps a most flattering 5-fer considering Marsh and Burns were essentially in ODI mode (probably under instructions... told to play their natural games and lift the scoring rate) and by the time Harris came out to bat it looked and felt like T20 mode. Rahul's simple catch was met with a Bronx cheer of sorts... so poor has been the Indian fielding in this series to date. Lucky he took it; if Burns had middled it better it would have been another boundary again.

Having a break today (got a little too much sun despite being under cover most of the day... how does that work?) but it will be interesting to see how Sharma and Rahul go about their business today. It goes without saying Australia will need to strike early (of course) and expose the middle order. Kohli and Rahane should make some hay if/when they go out to bat. The pitch is probably reaching its peak for batting but I'm hoping it can reward Harris, Starc and Hazlewood if they stick to the correct line and length and chances are taken... and Lyon may also get something out of it if he plugs away.

At best, India, if they have a brilliant day, could get anywhere between 325-350... maybe even more (but not 400), so they would still be trailing by 150-175 runs at the close of play today in that scenario. On the other hand, the loss of a few early wickets this morning could see them well and truly behind in the match again.

The nightmare at last turning around for young KL Rahul. Scores his first test hundred, 110.......
Skipper Kohli has scored his 4th of the series and is still going, India 286-3.
Still trailing Australia by that exact number though, 286!.

Rohit Sharma yet again failing to build on a start and giving the opposition an early opening at the start of play on a day, getting played on of Lyon for 53.

A poor umpiring call does Ajinkya Rahane in, not for the first time in the series, and then Suresh Raina goes first ball as the match turns decisively in Australia's favor.

India somehow should drag themselves to at least 373 to avoid the follow-on.

India go to stumps at 342-5. Kohli is 140 notout, and Saha survived for an hour or so to score 14 not out. The lower order has only 2 number 11s this time, so hopefully they'll go pass the follow-on mark and add a few more.

msp83 wrote:The nightmare at last turning around for young KL Rahul. Scores his first test hundred, 110.......

Blimey, its only his second Test. You could put the first one down to nerves, now he is showing that the potential is there - that 110 is a very mature innings for one so young

Am not convinced Raina will ever be a Test player, probably worth another try but didn't seem too good against fast bowling in the past to put it mildly

--i saw Rahul quite closely and at length...against a high quality attack under the real stress of a test match game......there could be more difficult pitches he would be faced with but it was not the Patta of rajkot or Chennai.

--and what I saw was a very simple batsman.....does the simple things right......get behind the line of every ball that is in line with the stumps...and presents a full straight bat...and leaves well and freely that's not in line with his stumps.
and when short outside off he cuts, getting on top of the ball( not the flash airy cuts)...and handles the short dug in ball well as he tries to play it down with the bat getting behind the line of the ball.....it will get him occasionally in trouble with short legs on some very bouncy pitches...but will serve him well more often than not...because he keeps the eye on the ball, tries to get behind the line and use bat as the first line of defense to keep the ball down.
and a compact straight forward defense.....but essentially a back foot player....standing in the crease with the weight on the back-foot.

--a very simple old fashioned test match batsman.....who will never be a big star....a tighter, less strokeful version of Rahane...but has enough to serve India well as an opener...
Ohh wish we had taken him to England.....but at the same time better now than later.

--Pujara worth mentioning again and in contrast to Rahane and Rahul...inspite of his reputation as a technically correct batsman presents an angled bat with phase closing in when defending and ....uses too much of the bottom hand to work the straight ball on the onside when he should be playing in the V.
and that is why he gets caught so much at short leg, and lbw and played on to the incoming deliveries.
Its not bad form or bad luck but a severe technical flaw that has been guised because of perceptions of his technical correctness.

--Rohit and Raina will rue this....there may not be too many chances for the to break thru in test match squads and Tiwary and rayadu are breathing down the neck and there will be presumably no favoritism in selections.

---on the match situation....India has to bat 2 sessions to take the match to safety and 3 session to build some pressure on Australia and they will last minum one session because they have Saha, Ashwin, Bhivi and Shami all of whom can bat with Kohli on this a relatively more benign pitch.

but one session bowled out means....Aus has a sniff and India would not have shut the game out.....and will have to work hard again on D5 to save the game.

A third of his dismissals could have been reversed by DRS, how has he not been unlucky? A Had starts in four innings, I agree it's not completely down to bad luck, but he can't be that technically deficient if he's managed to rock up. Hopefully he comes back, he's one of the best #3s in the game.

kingraf wrote:A third of his dismissals could have been reversed by DRS, how has he not been unlucky? A Had starts in four innings, I agree it's not completely down to bad luck, but he can't be that technically deficient if he's managed to rock up. Hopefully he comes back, he's one of the best #3s in the game.

that is if you assume that DRS is 100% perfect, i think DRS trajectories are +/- in the balpak only and not absolute truth .....the calls have been marginal when the batsmen were beaten fair and square....like Rahane today.....it was OK to give him out....he was beaten fair and square on the back foot..


on anotehr subject to save a new post :
Smith's open frustrations are good signs for his opponents....incidents and people can get under his skin easier...

and he blinked in the last test took a step back when declaring allowing India to get away with a draw.

I do expect that if India produces one more session of control if not outright aggression Smith will buckle a bit further.....
and hence I do rate India's chances a bit higher of getting away with a draw, then if there was Clarke on their side and Dhoni on ours

well played Virat Kohli once again!!!!!!!! Also a maiden hundred for Rahul, good on him.

Must say finding it hard to care too much about cricket given the events in Paris.

What happened to bouncy pitches? 3 out of 4 in this series have been very slow... Whilst Adelaide (historically) and Melbourne (recently, although it varies) have tended to be a bit on the slow side, Sydney has recently offered a fair amount to the seamers, but not this one.

Rahul showing that talk of him being protected bla bla was really just nonsense. Good to see him bounce back, looked compact technically, although I think he will struggle against the short ball. Kohli is just a class class act. I think he will continue to struggle a bit in England because of his wish to play outside off if there is latteral movement, but he will score bucketloads elsewhere.

Sharma got a 50 and it seems a bit unfair to criticise him for that (especially given him coming in at 1-0; had he got out early India would really have been in all sorts of trouble) but then Watson copped a load also for "only" scoring 82 in the first dig so... I do think some players can do no good in some people's eyes. Yes it is incredibly frustrating watching players not make the most of their obvious talent, but you have to wonder whether the alternatives are any better.

like Mike, too shaken by the tragedy in Paris to have much interest in this match right now.

Pleased for Kohli. Fantastic player, showing it once again after the fairly silly suggestions that he should be dropped following his struggles in England.

Pitches have seemed pretty ordinary. Surprising that: after the success Aus had with bouncy pitches against England you'd have though they'd have been equally successful against India? Maybe the grounds were worried about three-day tests and loss of revenue?

India's fielding is quite simply unacceptable. I'd be extremely unhappy if my Club side fielded like that (and Captain Clint would be going crazy), no exaggeration. This simply can't be a team coached by Duncan Fletcher (who actually managed to turn Monty into a passable fielder and someone who valued his wicket).

KP_fan wrote:

... on anotehr subject to save a new post :
Smith's open frustrations are good signs for his opponents....incidents and people can get under his skin easier...

and he blinked in the last test took a step back when declaring allowing India to get away with a draw.

I do expect that if India produces one more session of control if not outright aggression Smith will buckle a bit further.....
and hence I do rate India's chances a bit higher of getting away with a draw, then if there was Clarke on their side and Dhoni on ours

KP_f - as so often, you over egg the pudding for my liking but I do agree with you that Smith's body language was poor on day 3. Seemed overly annoyed which could well have been off putting for his team mates.

Well, it's only his third test as skipper, and he got a hammering in New media over day Five at the G. Combined with the fact that they only snatched four wickets today, and need 15 in two days on a pitch which yielded 12 in three, and it becomes clear that today was probably the hardest he's had as skipper, trying to force a result.

Following up Mike's comment, I suspect Watson is one of those players whose worth to the Australian team will only be (or come near to being) recognised once he's no longer there.

Whilst I can understand to an extent the frustrations of some posters that he doesn't kick on enough with the bat, I do feel that too much flak comes his way on this board. Yes, there is a predictability that he won't turn a match on its head but that too often seems to blur the picture of useful reliability. From a quick look at his stats, he's comfortably averaging in the mid 30s (not great but I didn't say he was!) and gets to at least a fifty in every other Test.

He's never going to run through an opposition with the ball either. However, he's a handy foil for the main quartet, keeping it tight and building pressure.

Probably easier to criticise him now than replace him in the future ....

Got us all out for 96... Think he took five wickets in 21 deliveries

Rahul has a much wider range of strokes than what he displayed today. Not as good as Rahane or Kohli but think he has the talent and the technique to become one of the best openers in test cricket. I've seen him bat domestically and he can definitely explode when set. He just needs to adapt to the extra pace of the international bowlers and learn to leave the short ball a bit more like Vijay.

Unlike KPF, I do think he can become a "big star" with proper guidance. The guy is quality, trust me.

Found this rather interesting Re: India's fielding. This is their slip fielding performances since 2011 (can't verify read it on Twitter)
Raina - caught 8 dropped 0 100%
Dhawan - caught 8 dropped 3 72.72%
R Sharma - caught 5 dropped 2 71.14%
Vijay - caught 9 dropped 4 69.23%
Ashwin - caught 4 dropped 3 57.14%
Rahane - caught 2 dropped 2 50%
Jadeja - caught 2 dropped 2 50%
Kohli - caught 15 dropped 15 50%

As a captain, you're hoping for your slip cordon to be near 80%, and yet India only have one guy over that. Remarkable as most of these guys are top quality fielders everywhere else. But it goes back to what I said last year when Cook dropped a catch, there are no easy slip catches. Still, 53 dropped slip catches mean India on average need to earn 21 wickets a match. An unsustainable situation for match winning

Tells you why Raina is still in the scheme of things in Tests. Only probable reason

there are no such reliable "dropped catch" stats

It's a rather simple analysis. Some will undoubtedly be difficult and near impossible, with the player only getting fingertips. But if youre on 50% with a thirty catch sample, odds are you're around the right level.

Well, Australia dropped about 5 or 6 yesterday which didn't help their cause. A couple of ones could be considered difficult/very difficult chances but at least 3 or 4 should have been taken. It was their worst day in the field for a long time.

Lucky Watson came to the rescue with those consecutive balls otherwise it would have been a much longer day in the field indeed.

Re the pitch: definitely as close as you'll get to an Indian pitch with much less bounce and carry through. We've had a very dry spell and all of the bowlers would have had their work cut out in this heat. It was starting to do some strange things yesterday... a few balls kept very low. Don't think they hit cracks; more like the ball hit dead spots.

I'm not sure if you can purely extrapolate the number of wickets taken so far w.r.t. the amount of time left. Have a feeling we'll see clumps of wickets in the last 2 days... nothing would surprise. Footmarks will have a big say in it as usual. Panic, desperation and scoreboard pressure too.

KP_fan wrote:

on another subject to save a new post :
Smith's open frustrations are good signs for his opponents....incidents and people can get under his skin easier...

and he blinked in the last test took a step back when declaring allowing India to get away with a draw.

I do expect that if India produces one more session of control if not outright aggression Smith will buckle a bit further.....
and hence I do rate India's chances a bit higher of getting away with a draw, then if there was Clarke on their side and Dhoni on ours

Maybe a little premature to arrive at such a conclusion about Steve Smith.

Don't be fooled. If Australia can run through the rest of the Indian batting lineup today (say just after lunch) he will go for the throat big time.
If Australia can then pile on 100-150 or so in quick time and that would set up another scenario where we might see India buckle under pressure on Day 5.

There are other scenarios of course...

Kohli departs for a truly magnificent 147.

India have now avoided the follow on.

375/6

That's me done.

390/7 with Ashwin on 19 and Kumar yet to get off the mark. Hazlewood and Lyon currently bowling well in tandem. Kumar just badly missed by Burns off Lyon who seems out of luck at the moment. Fair bit resting on Ashwin to get India to lunch and perhaps then in sight of safety ....

Night, folks.

G'Night Guildford.

Another easy catch blundered by Joe Burns. Honestly... the disease is catching!

Useful partnership between Ashwin and Kumar passes 50.

Lead under 100 now.

New ball taken and Yadav skies a swirly one for Haddin.

So India all out for 475. Australia have a 97 run lead.

Smith overtakes Bradman for most runs in a series  (Australia v India in Oz)... in one less Test match.

S Smith* 4/725/145.00
Bradman 5/715/178.75
Ponting 4/706/100.85
Kohli* 4/646/92.28
Clarke 4/626/125.50

Bit of a thunderstorm approaching... some rumbling outside here. No rain as yet though.
Should be approaching the SCG in about half an hour I'd say. Could be light issues as well.

Rogers and Smith scoring quickly.
105/2 and Australia have a lead of 202 runs now.

A great knock from Smith comes to an end. Looking to really push the lead along.

Only 9 overs remaining with the light not looking too great. It would be good if they could get another 30 runs or so to get the lead over 300 and then declare overnight.

Burns is seeing them large. He has raced to 40 and the lead is now up over 300.

India already realizing the value of Mahendra Singh Dhoni the wicketkeeper. Saha has had a pretty poor day with the gloves, missed 2 clear opportunities, a run-out and a stumping, and letting a few by runs as well, hasn't been that sharp keeping to Ashwin....... And that missed stumping of Burns is continuing to cost them big.......