India is slowly chipping away Australia’s mammoth first-innings total on day three of the Ahmedabad Test, with young opener Shubman Gill leading the charge.
The hosts are 1-129 at lunch, with Chesteshwar Pujara (22 not out) and Shubman Gill (65 not out) at the crease.
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Starting the day 0-38, Gill narrowly avoided an early scare when a Mitchell Starc short ball was gloved down the leg side, narrowly evading a diving Alex Carey with the gloves. Gill and Sharma brought up their 50-run partnership later that over.
Starc peppered the right-handers with chin music with three fielders on the boundary rope behind square — but Sharma wasn’t afraid to play his shots, gleefully hooking the paceman towards fine leg on multiple occasions.
Australia wasted its first review in the 18th over when Gill charged down the wicket at Nathan Lyon and was struck on the pad — but Hawkeye showed impact was outside the line of off stump.
Matthew Kuhnemann created the first breakthrough of the morning before the drinks break, with Sharma firmly punching a short delivery towards Marnus Labuschagne at cover, who roared with delight after pouching the chance.
Cheteshwar Pujara used his feet against the spinners, skipping down the pitch and expertly flicking Australia’s tweakers through mid wicket. Kuhnemann found the outside edge of Pujara’s bat in the 25th over, but it dropped short of captain Steve Smith at first slip.
Gill brought up his fifty in the 29th over with an elegant cover drive against Starc, reaching the minor milestone in 90 deliveries.
The 23-year-old’s knock almost came to an abrupt end moments before the lunch break when Todd Murphy beat his inside edge — only for the ball to somehow bounce over middle stump and fly through for four byes.
Indian superstar spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has lavished praise on Aussie all-rounder Cameron Green after the 23-year-old’s maiden Test ton.
Ashwin – who picked up six scalps in the first innings and boasts the most wickets of any Indian against Australia in Test history – labelled head Green a “once in a generation” cricketer ahead of day three in Ahmedabad.
“I hope you tuned into the IPL auction (Green was sold for AU$3.15 million); it just tells you how the Indian cricketing fraternity rates Cameron Green,” Ashwin said.
“I think he’s a fantastic player. Just the raw materials for a person as tall as him, lovely levers, good batting sense, can bowl and really hit the deck well, moves pretty well on the field.
“These are once-in-a-generation cricketers you are talking about. We come from different countries – India is very different, we can’t protect such players for a long period of time. It’s perform or perish. But in countries like Australia and England, they’re doing pretty well at that. I expect Cameron Green to be a wonderful cricketer down the line.”
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Ashwin added that he had not planned the dismissal that finally brought the young gun undone.
“He’s got his strengths and you want to stay away from his strengths. Clearly from what he saw in Australia – I played a practice game against him at Drummoyne Oval in Sydney,” Ashwin added.
“From there on, I’ve been watching him bat, how well he moves to balls outside off, how well he comes down the pitch, how he sweeps the ball when he came to the subcontinent.
“As a bowler it’s my duty to keep a check on all these things and also try to make a plan to try and make it uncomfortable for him. It was not a pitch where a lot of things were going for me. So I had to use the scrambled seam, drift, whatever was available.”
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India XI: Rohit Sharma (c), Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Ravindra Jadeja, KS Bharat (wk), R Ashwin, Axar Patel, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami
Australia XI: Usman Khawaja, Travis Head, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith (c), Peter Handscomb, Cameron Green, Alex Carey (wk), Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Todd Murphy, Matthew Kuhnemann