Perhaps for the first time on this Indian tour, Australia dominated a complete day's of play when they took on India on Day 1 of the third Test match at the Holkar Stadium in Indore. And unsurprisingly, it was their spinners who helped them achieve that. Matthew Kuhnemann's maiden five-wicket haul coupled with Nathan Lyon's 3 for 25 and Todd Murphy's 1 for 23 allowed the Kangaroos to bowl India out for 109 after they were asked to field first.
Kuhnemann's slow left-arm spin was too good on the day for the star-studded Indian lineup as he took the wickets of Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, Shreyas Iyer, Ravichandran Ashwin and Umesh Yadav to register his first-ever five-wicket haul in Test match cricket. It took Australia a little over a session to bowl out the Men in Blue in their home conditions.
In response, while India had got the wicket of Travis Head early, a 96-run stand between Usman Khawaja (60) and Marnus Labuschagne (31) had more or less ensured that Australia would take the lead and even though the Aussies ended the Day's play at 156/4 with all wickets falling to Ravindra Jadeja, the day completely belonged to the visitors, who had faced a lot of criticism heading into this Test match.
The scoreboard at the end of the Day's play showed Australia leading by 47 runs with 6 wickets in hand and Peter Handscomb and Cameron Green out in the middle. Jadeja was the only wicket-taker for India but was guilty of bowling a no-ball on which he had removed Labuschagne early before his stand with Khawaja compelety helped Australia seal the day.
Left-handed Khawaja was the batter on display from both the innings and nearly played a chanceless knock before ultimately falling to Jadeja. He trusted his defence but was went for his strokes when he thought the ball was there to be hit. His 147-ball knock consisted of four boundaries.
All isn't lost for India though despite a 14-wicket day and them having conceded a 47-run lead already which is only going to get thicker on Day 2. This is because they have the batters in their side who would be determined to put up a better show in the second innings and they would take heart from the fact that they are not going to bat fourth on this track.
Earlier, Virat Kohli (22) and Shubman Gill (21) were the top-scorers for India in a flop show by the batters on a spinning track.