Nagpur: Perfection is a myth they say. But the Indian team led by Rohit Sharma came as close to that as humanly possible on Day 1 of the first Test match of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy at the Vidarabha Cricket Association Stadium in Nagpur. Addressing the imperfections first, the hosts did not win the toss which could have been a huge advantage to Australia. But possibly the Aussie openers- Usman Khawaja and David Warner- got too carried away with all the talk about the wicket being a spinner's paradise that they didn't expect what was coming from the Indian seamers. Mohammed Siraj and Mohammed Shami scalped a wicket each to reduce the visitors to 2 down for 2 in just the third over of the match.
Perhaps the only passage of play with which Australia would have been pleased was the one that followed the fall of their openers up until the Lunch Break where Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith (37) batted brilliantly against the Indian spinners. It looked like the ploy of having a Ravichandran Ashwin 'duplicate' in their nets will bear fruits but that didn't quite prove to be the case. The partnership worth 82 runs, still the highest in the match so far, was good while it lasted but post that it was all about the Indian spin duo.
Ravindra Jadeja scalped 2 wickets in 2 balls to begin with and after that he was all over the Australian batters. Not for a moment it felt that star Indian all-rounder was returning from a long injury layoff. The only other time Australia looked in some control of the proceedings was when the pair of Peter Handscomb (31) and Alex Carey (36) was out in the middle. Carey played the reverse sweep once too many as Ashwin (3/42) got rid of him to become the second fastest bowler in world cricket to reach 450 Test wickets before Handscomb fell prey to Jadeja.
The left-arm spinner completed his 11th five-wicket haul (5/47) as India bowled out the opposition for a mere 177. Labuschagne top-scored with a 49 but that wasn't enought to even get the visitors past the 200-run mark. In response, Rohit Sharma looked in sublime form and didn't waste any time to get his eye in. Half-volleys were offered and the Indian captain was pleased to make the most of them, scoring 9 boundaries and 1 six in his unbeatean 56 off 69 at a strike rate of over 80. While it had started to look like India would end the day without the loss of any wicket, there came the other bit of imperfection in India's play on Thursday as KL Rahul departed for 20 off 71 perhaps getting a tad too defensive and falling to debutant Todd Murphy.
R Ashwin came in to bat at number 3 and did the job of seeing it through to the end of the day's play pretty well, remaining unbeaten on 0 off 5, facing the final 5 deliveries of the day and not trying anything fancy as India ended Day 1 on 77/1, trailing by exactly a 100 runs. With 9 wickets in hand, India are in the driving Test in the Nagpur Test and if there is a ever a thing called momentum which affects chances, this should set things up perfectly for the remainder of the series for the home team.