Twitter Reactions: Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja spin a web around Australia at the SCG

Cummins and Handscomb will look to reduce the deficit on the fourth day.

By Aditya Gajanan Kukalyekar verified

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Kuldeep Yadav
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Kuldeep Yadav. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

India are well and truly the favourites to seal the ongoing fourth Test against Australia. The hosts were under the pump from the word go but one of their openers Marcus Harris showed excellent resilience and scored quickly. But the second session saw the middle-order crumbling once again even as India’s spin twins Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav spun a web around the batsmen despite the ball not turning much like it does in the sub-continent.

The day began brightly for the home side with Harris and Usman Khawaja playing superbly. Both of them added 48 runs more to the total in the first hour only for the latter to throw his wicket away unnecessarily. Kuldeep tossed one up nicely and Khawaja looked to show some intent against him by coming down the ground. However, he could only hit the ball off the inside splice of the bat and the catch was taken by Cheteshwar Pujara at mid-wicket.

It didn’t deter Harris though as he displayed some exceptional batting much to the delight of the Pink crowd present in the stadium. Even their new number three batsman Marnus Labuschagne also showed that he belongs to this level as the duo added 56 runs together to go unscathed until lunch.

The dreaded second session

However, the post-lunch session saw another familiar Australian collapse and the hard work in the morning was undone almost immediately. Harris played on a delivery from Jadeja while trying to guide the ball to the third man while some excellent field placement from Virat Kohli and some guile by Ajinkya Rahane saw the back of Labuschagne. Shaun Marsh might be playing his last Test as he once again failed only to be snaffled by Jadeja.

For a brief period then, Travis Head and Peter Handscomb batted well to add 40 runs together and the former had a brain fade moment. He came down the track to Kuldeep and tapped the full toss back to the bowler. From sitting pretty at 122/1 at lunch, Australia went into the Tea at 192/5.

The third session saw their captain Tim Paine also walking back to the hut as he was undone by a superb delivery from Kuldeep. Since then Pat Cummins, their in-form ‘batsman’, and Handscomb scored 38 runs together and rather looked comfortable in fading light. The clouds also gathered which led to the umpires not allowing the pacers to bowl.

Eventually, the play had to be stopped due to extreme bad light and with a heavy rain soon following it, a total of 16 overs were wasted in the day as the umpires decided to call it a day. Australia were 236/6 and they still trail by a massive 386 runs. They will have to battle against the spinners who will have their tails up on a turning pitch on the last two days now.

Here’s how Twitter reacted during the course of the day:

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