Pat Cummins has struck twice in the same over and Virat Kohli is gone, leaving Australia seven wickets away from winning a classic Boxing Day Test.
Mitchell Starc took the key wicket of Kohli for just five on the stroke of lunch to put Australia in the driver’s seat.
India are 3-33 at lunch on day five, with emerging star Yashashvi at the crease on 14.
And the pulsating Test has now broken a near century-old record for the biggest crowd ever at a Test match in Australia, passing a Bradman-era Ashes clash at the famous ground in 1937. The final-day crowd is tipped to swell to as big as 75,000.
Nathan Lyon and Scott Boland briefly stretched their gutsy 10th wicket partnership into the final day, before Lyon was dismissed by Jasprit Bumrah.
It set India 340 runs to win the Test from 92 overs on the final day.
Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul were the only two Indian batters to fall before lunch.
Sharma’s career is now in the hands of selectors, with Indian’s standing captain failing to pass 10 in his three Tests this series after also battling in their home whitewash against New Zealand.
The 37-year-old looked far more promising early in his innings, playing balls from Cummins and Starc with the new ball much later and behind is front pad, but Australia had turned to tempting him into the pull shot, which is how he fell on day two.
With mid-wicket vacant, Sharma tried to turn a fourth-stump ball from Cummins into the leg side and edged into the cordon for nine.
Cummins had KL Rahul — India’s best specialist batter in the series — out moments later for a duck, popping the balloon the tourists had just starting inflating.
Rahul couldn’t have done much more to keep out a ball that darted off the pitch back in towards his outside edge. He would have played well inside it if the ball hadn’t deviated quite so much.
Mitch Marsh was brought on to bowl the 20th over of India’s innings in a show of faith from captain Cummins as he fights to keep his own Test career alive.
Content Source: www.perthnow.com.au