Courtesy: Cricket Australia
On Saturday, December 7, Australia inched closer to a victory in the second Test of the five-match Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) after Travis Head scored his eighth hundred in the longest format of the game in front of his hometown fans at the Adelaide Oval. After taking a massive first innings lead of 157 runs, Australia pressed home the advantage by dismissing five Indian batters in the final session on day two, reducing them to 128/5.
Notably, Australia started play on day two of the second Test match on 86/1, and in the first half hour or so, Jasprit Bumrah picked up the wicket of a well set Nathan McSweeney for 39 off 109 before strangling Steve Smith down the leg side for just two runs. Marnus Labuschagne scored his first fifty in Test cricket in quite some time, reaching 64 runs in 126 balls with nine fours before Nitish Kumar Reddy dismissed him against the run of play.
From this point onwards, Travis Head took charge of the Australian innings, racing to his eighth Test hundred, second against India while stitching together key partnerships with the middle to lower order batters. The left-handed batter ended up scoring 140 runs in just 141 balls before Mohammed Siraj bowled him, but at that point, he had put Australia in a commanding position in the Test match.
Australia were eventually bowled out for 337 runs in the third session of play on day two after Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj picked up four wickets each. After falling behind by 157 runs in the first innings, Indian batters had all to do in the second innings, but under lights with the new pink ball, Australian fast bowling trio of Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, and Scott Boland were exceptional, taking five wickets, to put themselves in prime position to win the second BGT Test match.
Only the likes of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill got into the 20s for India with some fluent strokeplay, while Rishabh Pant 28*(25) and Nitish Kumar Reddy 15*(14) remained unbeaten at stumps on day two.
