By IANS,
Hyderabad: The first session belonged to Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, the last to Ravindra Jadeja and the middle to Michael Clarke, who struck a strokeful 91 and then surprisingly declared the Australia’s first innings at 237 for nine on the opening day of the second cricket Test against India here Saturday.
Clarke tried to play on the minds of Indian openers by squeezing in three overs before stumps, but openers Virender Sehwag and Murali Vijay saw the day off scoring five runs at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium at Uppal.
Kumar, who hardly had anything to do in the Chennai Test, revelled here on a pitch with variable bounce to dismiss three of the top-order batsmen.
David Warner played on to became Kumar’s first Test victim, Ed Cowan was leg-before to sharp inswinging delivery that appeared to pitch a shade outside the legstump, while Shane Watson was done in by one that swung in and kept a trifle low.
Then came the familiar Clarke act as he continued to dominate the Indian attack and give substance to the Australia’s batting. Seeing a rash of wickets fall at the other end, he was the ninth to be out nine short of his 10the hundred as captain. He was bowled by Jadeja going for a big swipe.
Clarke and wicketkeeper Matthew Wade (62), playing with a cheekbone fracture suffered in training Friday, raised hopes of a stupendous recovery with Australia’s best fifth-wicket partnership of 145 against India by seeing through the second session adding 104 runs to go to tea at 187 for four.
It was Kumar who effected the breakthrough, this time by sprawling to his left at point to come up with a splendid catch to dismiss Wade and Australia quickly lost the remaining five wickets without in a jiffy.
It was Kumar’s initial burst that left them stunned. In an extended spell of nine overs, the Uttar Pradesh bowler swung the ball both ways to take all his three wickets as the cracks in the pitch left the batsmen guessing.
Left-arm Ravindra Jadeja (3/33) and offspinner Harbhajan Singh (2/52), ran through the lower batting order with Ashwin, man of the match in Chennai, not getting to bowl at all in the post-tea session.
After removing Wade, Jadeja struck to remove Moises Henriques (5), who struck two half centuries on debut in Chennai, and debutant Glenn Maxwell (13).
Australia dropped Nathan Lyon and left-arm pacer Mitchell Starc for Xavier Doherty and all-rounder Maxwell. India, who lead the series 1-0, went in with the winning Chennai squad unchanged.