A gritty knock from Pat Cummins kept India waiting for a win in the third Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Saturday.
The right-hander, a day earlier had said that the batsmen in his team needed to bat like Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara if they have any chance of winning the contest. And on a day when all of them failed at once, he stood tall with a gritty 61 off 103 balls that became the symbol of the Aussie fightback in the second innings.
Indian skipper Kohli declared the innings at 106/8 and set Australia a total of 399 runs to chase down. Things worked just according to plan for Kohli as his bowlers stepped up once again and rattled the Australian batting, leaving them at 63/3 at one stage.
Shaun Marsh, who hasn’t been in the best of forms this series fought with 44 runs off 72 deliveries. Travis Head, another left-hander also scored a resilient 34 but once India were able to send them back to the pavilion, it was only a matter of time they had the tail batting. Captain Tim Paine’s dismissal with the score at 176/7 gave India the hope of wrapping the contest and attaining the series lead but Cummins had other ideas. He added 39 runs with Mitchell Starc and another 43 with Nathan Lyon as he alone kept India at bay. Earlier in the day, Cummins scalped six wickets to prevent India from running away with huge score on the board.