- Australia 469 & 123-4; India 296
- Batter stands firm in face of early wickets
There was a point, not long before tea, when anything seemed possible. Australia had a handy lead and were attempting to stretch it, but India had hope. The crowd bubbled and shrieked, Virat Kohli conducting from the cordon, and the air was tense with potential. But then Steve Smith joined Marnus Labuschagne and together they wrung the energy out of the occasion, muffling a vibrant crowd under the suffocating blanket they knitted out of pure competence.
Labuschagne is so preternaturally calm that, next man in and padded up in Australia’s dressing room, he had actually been asleep until the crowd’s reaction to David Warner’s early dismissal roused him from his slumber. He proceeded to play as if determined to wreak the most obvious form of revenge, by casting the very people who had woken him into stupor.
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