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Those three wickets for six runs, in a manic final 15 minutes of the day's play, undid all the good work that had gone before, and put paid to any hope India may have entertained that it could still turn this game around, asserts Prem Panicker after Day 2 of the Boxing Day Test.
Morning session
Bowling to Steven Smith must be akin to having to bowl to your eccentric uncle in the backyard.
A Jasprit Bumrah delivery that beat his outside edge drew an audible 'Well bowled' from the batter who then wandered off to mime various possible responses he could have deployed against that delivery.
The next ball, also flashing past the outside edge, drew an equally audible 'Oooo'.
Beneath all the madness though, there was method: A pronounced forward and across movement that took him to the fourth stump and largely took LBW out of the equation; bat always in front of the pad, also negating LBW and providing a second line of defence in case the ball took the edge.
An aesthete would likely wince in disgust, as would bowlers in exasperation -- but what mattered was that Smith continued where he had left off, accumulating runs through nudges, nurdles, and the odd emphatic shot, the best of the lot being a controlled hook at a short ball from Bumrah that fetched him six to fine leg. (In the second hour, Smith punished the excitable but largely ineffective Mohammad Siraj with a hooked six off a misdirected bouncer).
That he would get to his 11th century against India, and 34th overall, seemed almost inevitable. He did, early in the second hour, and celebrated with that hooked six off Siraj and a follow up in the form of a crashing cover drive off the increasingly frustrated bowler.
Once he crossed the century mark, there was a sea change -- the eccentricities went into cold storage, the footwork became more aggressive, and the strokeplay imperious.
At the other end, Pat Cummins was occasionally beaten, but he shrugged those off, kept his focus, and continued to accumulate, rolling the strike over and playing the odd firm stroke when opportunity offered.
Opportunity was on offer, in generous measure.
Needing to own the first hour of play, the Indian bowlers wasted the five-overs-old ball with a mixture of wayward lines, scattershot lengths, and a seeming inability to bowl to their fields.
Siraj bowled an opening over so anodyne that he was promptly replaced by Bumrah. At the other end, Akash Deep was so up and down, with modest pace and minimal to no movement, that batsmen could trust the first line and play their shots.
A measure of how badly things went for the tourists is the fact that Nitish Kumar Reddy got a bowl towards the back end of the crucial first hour, which produced 70 runs in 14 overs.
Before play began, the Indians were seen in a huddle, listening intently to animated speeches by first Rohit Sharma, then Virat Kohli. That animation didn't carry on into the field of play, though -- if the bowling was, with the exception of Bumrah, ordinary, the field placement was an exercise in hedging bets.
Despite the advantage of a ball just five overs old, India went with two slips and a gully -- and first Cummins, then Smith, took fours through the third slip region in the first three overs and eased any early pressure the Indians may have hoped to apply.
And once the two not out batsmen got going, the inevitable in-out field Rohit set meant that singles were there for the taking on both sides of the wicket, at will.
Net net, the Indian effort with the ball and in the field was low-energy -- and the Australians crashed in, powering their way to, and then beyond, the 400 mark.
When India finally broke through, it was not due to any remarkable bowling, but to the Aussie intent to accelerate once Smith crossed the century mark. Cummins lofted Ravindra Jadeja over the top, aiming for the on-side, but ended up slicing to cover where Reddy took an excellent running catch.
The damage had been done, though. Cummins scored 49 off 63 balls and, more pertinently, combined with Smith to put on the biggest partnership of the Australian innings -- 112 off just 135 balls, the rate of scoring a testament to the inefficacy of the Indian bowling attack.
A measure of which team had the wind in its sails was offered when Bumrah came back for a spell just before lunch -- and Mitchell Starc launched the second ball he faced, a length delivery on off, high over the long on boundary for the fourth six Bumrah has conceded in this innings.
Australia went in to lunch on 454/7, with Smith unbeaten on 139 and Starc batting 15 in a partnership already worth 43. The session produced 143 runs in 27 overs for the loss of Cummins -- and it is worth noting that the morning session of day one, watermarked by the Sam Konstas blitz, produced only 112.
If the morning session was make or break for both sides, the best summation is that Australia piled up runs and, in doing that, broke any hope India had of crashing through.
Before play began, all three results were possible -- by the end of the morning session, an India win has been ruled out, and the best the visitors can hope to do is dig deep and eke out a draw.
PostScript: Match Referee Andy Pycroft deemed that Kohli was guilty of a Level 1 offense when he deliberately shoulder charged debutant Sam Konstas yesterday morning. That entailed a fine and a demerit point.
Kohli accepted the verdict without contestation -- and, I'd suspect, with considerable internal relief because what his attempt at physical intimidation was, if the law had been strictly applied, a Level 2 offence that would have entailed two demerits, causing him to miss the crucial fifth Test in Sydney.
The long shadow of the cash-rich BCCI likely saved him from the punishment he deserved. Noticeably, even before play ended on day one, various BCCI apologists had trotted out a concerted defence of the player, all of it duly amplified by social media.
The preferred defence seemed to be on the lines of 'Who is Ricky Ponting (insert alternate name here) to comment on Kohli's action when he has been guilty of worse?'
It's the 'who gets to cast the first stone?' defence -- my behaviour is bad but that is okay because you have done worse?
For Cricket Australia, an India tour is the most lucrative gig going, and no one is going to rock that boat by acting against an Indian star and risking the wrath of the BCCI. And I suspect the players know it.
Post-lunch session
The end of the Australian innings was high comedy or incredibly frustrating. It all depends on your point of view.
Jadeja straightened the third ball of the session past Starc's forward defence to hit off. To the first ball of the next over, from Akash Deep, Smith danced down a long way, swatted at an innocuous delivery, managed only to inner edge onto his pads, and watched helplessly as it gently rolled back onto the stumps to dislodge the leg bail.
If that bizarre end to a superb innings was slapstick, what followed was irritating if you were an Indian bowler or fielder -- Nathan Lyon and Scott Boland kept the leg weary bowlers out on the field for a further 51 deliveries.
Boland was pinned twice, reviewed twice, and was reprieved twice before Bumrah came back on and pinned him for a third, and final, time.
Australia ended on 474 -- a total that puts paid to any hope India had of winning the Boxing Day Test.
But what really matters from the point of view of what is left of the series is the miles the Indian bowlers had to put in their legs. Bumrah bowled 28.4 overs, Siraj 23 and Akash Deep 26. There is Sydney to follow early in the new year; the bowlers will be leg weary going into that game.
One of the reasons the Australian bowling tailed off on the previous tour is that the Indian batsmen, notably Cheteshwar Pujara, put a lot of hard miles in their legs.
Also worth noting is the sub-optimal use of bowling resources. Nitish Reddy, ostensibly in the side as the relief seamer, bowled a mere nine overs and between them, he and Washington Sundar were used for 22 overs -- one less than Jadeja and Siraj.
If the management, which includes captain Rohit Sharma, had a plan when picking this lineup, that plan is not apparent in the execution.
The Indian response got off to the worst possible start. Sharma (presumably with a buy in from Coach Gautam Gambhir) opted to open the innings alongside Yashasvi Jaiswal. The fourth ball Sharma faced was short from Cummins; the batsman attempted a short arm pull with neither feet nor bat in optimal position. It ended up more as a shovel than a pull, and Sharma only managed to top-edge to mid on.
With that, Sharma has faced 70 deliveries across four innings in this series for total returns of 22 runs; his position as captain makes him undroppable, his form increasingly makes his slot as a batsman untenable, and what his continued poor form does for morale in the dressing room unquantifiable.
One thing for sure, there is enormous pressure now on Sharma, and that is reflecting in lacklustre captaincy.
K L Rahul rubbed it in, inadvertently, when he walked out as virtual opener and looked the part from the get go. Soft hands in defence, fluid footwork on the drives, an awareness of where singles were to be had -- it was all there on display.
Yashasvi Jaiswal started out iffy, alternating between walking out at Starc and being beaten, and staying on top of the crease and being beaten.
To his credit, he sussed things out fairly quickly, and settled down to play with greater discretion -- and once he did that, and began picking what balls he would play and which he would leave, his batting gained in assurance.
Calm, controlled accumulation saw the pair add 48 off 73 deliveries. It took a moment of magic to get rid of Rahul: On the stroke of tea, Cummins bowled a jaffa, from wide of the crease, on length and hitting the line of middle and off. The ball drew Rahul into the forward defence, the ball straightened to go past the outer edge to rattle off stump.
India, at the break, had lost two, with 51 on the board and Kohli scheduled to walk out after tea.
Post-tea session
The story of the third wicket partnership between Jaiswal and Kohli can be described in two strokes. One is a Kohli cover drive, the other a Jaiswal on drive, and both were played in the first hour after tea.
In both, what is noticeable is that the batsman's footwork is committed to the chosen stroke, and he is meeting the ball just below his eyeline.
Also, both batsmen addressed the ball in front of the wicket, which automatically straightens the bat face and ensures that the edge is relatively safe.
It's how you play Test cricket, and it is how the two took the sting out of the opening passages of post-tea play, with Cummins and Boland operating.
It is not that the bowling was ineffective -- both bowlers produced excellent deliveries and beat the bat on more than one occasion.
It is more that Kohli and Jaiswal were willing to play the ball on merit, to shrug off the occasions when they were beaten and to settle back into their work.
(And it helped that for some reason, edges didn't carry to the slip cordon.
The simple solution would be for slips to move up -- but when the ball was pitched back of length and the bat did not get in the way, the ball invariably carried to the 'keeper at chest and head height. That meant Alex Carey had to stay well back, and the slips had to take their positional cue from the 'keeper.)
Kohli in particular seemed willing to ride the tide of the game. His failures, in three of the five innings in this series, have owed largely to a palpable desire to dominate, to force the pace and bend the game to his will.
Australia preyed on that, leaving the cover region open and inviting Kohli to fish in troubled waters around the fifth and sixth stumps.
Kohli refused -- and underlined that he was aware of the trap with a small smile each time he let one go on that line. He was more willing to respect the bowling and to play as the conditions, and the match situation, dictated.
Earlier in the day, he was noticeably calmer in the field, and all of this in concert makes you think that maybe he has put the contretemps of yesterday behind him -- and, maybe, that the controversy had the unintended consequence of settling his nerves.
On the day, Kohli was more willing to let the ball come to him, and to play it under his eyes, where in earlier innings he had tried to go at the ball.
There's a cat and mouse quality to Test cricket, and it was on display in this session. The three quicks tested the batsmen's patience outside off; both Kohli and Jaiswal kept leaving on length.
This forced the bowlers to go straighter and bowl to the stumps -- which allowed the batsmen to play in front on both sides of the wicket. It wasn't electric -- but it was fascinating cricket. And as the ball softened and the seam flattened, the strokeplay became more emphatic, the fours more regular.
Cummins' captaincy was probing, with frequent changes of line and length for his bowlers and corresponding adjustments in the field intended to keep the batsmen thinking.
If the fielding side missed a bet, it was in that they began trying the bouncer, with fields set for the mis-hook, only after the ball was over the 30 over mark. And when they did try it Kohli -- at whom the ploy was directed -- coped with ease.
Jaiswal brought up his 9th Test 50 (to go with three big hundreds) off 81 balls during a passage of play that brought 47 runs in a ten over span where Boland, Starc and Nathan Lyon operated.
Just after he had crashed Boland through point for four and brought up the 100 of the partnership (153 balls), Jaiswal got out -- with much of the discredit due to Kohli -- when he squirted a fuller length delivery from Boland onto the on side, called and took off.
Kohli was ball-watching, though; his eye was not on his partner but on the ball, and with Jaiswal almost at the non-striker's end, the run out via Cummins was easy.
It was a pity -- Jaiswal, on 82 off 117, had come into his prime form, and looked good for a big hundred.
Jaiswal had earlier had the narrowest escape for either batsman when, a ball after imperiously lofting Marsh over the long on boundary, Jaiswal pushed down the wrong line and was rapped on the pads.
Australia reviewed -- and Jaiswal was reprieved when ball tracking found the ball pitching marginally outside leg. Only just -- but then, cricket is a game of millimetres.
Kohli's brain fade on that run appeared to have affected his concentration -- at the start of Boland's next over Kohli, who till then had religiously left outside off, fished at the fourth stump line, and nicked off for 36 (86 balls).
Akash Deep came out as nightwatchman -- and abdicated his duty. With an aggressive field packed with close in fielders, Boland went back of length, made the ball climb into Deep who fended it away off the hips for Nathan Lyon to dive and hold at backward short leg.
And in the same over Boland, who famously had taken 6 for 7 on this ground on debut, found Jadeja's edge only to see the ball drop agonisingly short of second slip.
PREM PANICKER ON THE STUMPS SHOW:
Those three wickets for six runs, in a manic final 15 minutes of the day's play, undid all the good work that had gone before, and put paid to any hope India may have entertained that it could still turn this game around in its favour. The next three days are all about India, 164/5 at close, fighting off the very real prospect of defeat.
PostScript: Test cricket just may have found a character. Sam Konstas, fielding mostly on the boundary, got the crowd going, miming a shoulder charge, then leading the crowd in a spell of waving hands. The way he got the crowd going was reminiscent of some of Jemimah Rodrigues' hi-jinks on the boundary.