The ICC World Test Championship (WTC) final is currently underway at the Oval in London. After the first two days of play, it would be fair to say that Australia have an upper hand in the match over India. After being put in to bat first in overcast conditions, the Kangaroos first put on 469 runs on the board before reducing the Men in Blue to 151/5 at Stumps on Day 2. Even India's score at the end of the day's play on Thursday was a recovery of sorts with the scoreboard reading 71/4 at one stage.
However, it could have been much worse for Team India had comeback man Ajinkya Rahane not received a lucky reprieve from Australian captain Pat Cummins. The incident happened in the last ball of the 22nd over. The right-arm pacer bowled a superb delivery which beat Rahane's outside edge to hit him on his back pad and replays confirmed that the ball would have gone on to hit the stumps but after the batter reviewed the decision, it was found that the bowler had actually delivered a no-ball.
The moment has already had a bit of an impact in the match. At that time, India were 87/4 with Rahane and Ravindra Jadeja in the middle of a partnership. The two eventually went on to stitch India's best partnership of the match so far, adding 71 runs off the 100 balls. Moreover, with India still trailing Australia by 318 runs and Rahane not out on 29 off 71 balls, he is likely to be the key for the Rohit Sharma-led side who wouldn't want to go down without a fight a waste another chance of winning an ICC title after coming so close.
Talking about Australia's innings, it was Travis Head (163) and Steve Smith (121) who scored hundreds for them as they posted a dominant first innings total. Mohammed Siraj ended up with figures of 4/108 while Mohammed Shami (2/122), Shardul Thakur (2/83) and Ravindra Jadeja (1/56) also found themselves amongst wickets. In India's innings far, Mitchell Starc, Cummins, Scott Boland, Cameron Green and Nathan Lyon have all picked up a wicket each.