Rishabh Pant blast rocks Australia on 15-wicket day to keep India’s hopes alive
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When the fourth Australia-India Test at Melbourne finished with an hour to go on the final day, those who love the long game were sated. The experience was hearty and nutritious, like working your way through a large slice of dense and worthy rye bread. The first two days of the fifth Test in Sydney, by contrast, have been a pure sugar rush. Eleven wickets on day one were followed by 15 on day two, as the match careened towards a conclusion though a winner remains unclear.
![[Prasidh Krishna (left) celebrates one of this three wickets with KL Rahul as India restricted Australia 181 in their first innings on day two of the fifth Test at the SCG. ]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/288deab1878924c0a5edafe8588d651d8834132d/90_39_2685_1611/master/2685.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
India all out 185 was the first-day story, but somehow that turned into a four-run lead. Reading that sentence could only leave the assumption that Jasprit Bumrah must have made that happen, but as it turned out that was only true of the first 20 percent. It was Bumrah who made Usman Khawaja nick behind on the first evening, a wicket on the very last ball of the last over, and it was Bumrah the next morning who drew the faintest forensically detected edge from India’s roadblock in Melbourne, Marnus Labuschagne.
That took Bumrah to 32 wickets in the series, going past Bishan Bedi to take the record for any Indian bowler touring Australia, and sitting six short of the all-time mark set by Maurice Tate in 1925. With a potential 18 Australian wickets available, injury was the only thing likely to stop Bumrah’s march, and that’s when it arrived, a massive turning point as he left the SCG for scans on his back.
So far in the series all the lifting has been done by Bumrah, but at last India’s other bowlers stepped up. On a pitch offering bounce and lateral movement from tufts of patchy grass, Mohammed Siraj was also swinging the ball in the air and hitting an inviting length. Sam Konstas edged to gully, Travis Head to second slip, and Australia were 39 for four.
