Key events
91st over: Australia 332-6 (Smith 78, Cummins 17) Bumrah beats Smith on the first! That was a statement ball. It got the batter jumping and a drew a rueful grin from the bowler. Bumrah’s grin just gets wider as he beats Smith on the final three. A masterful maiden.
90th over: Australia 332-6 (Smith 78, Cummins 17) Cummins continues to take easy singles and gift the strike to Smith. The Australian captain has 100+ runs for the series at an average of almost 20. Smith has 200+ thanks to that 101 in the third Test and adds another four to that tally, stepping down and driving Deep through the covers. Great shot! This partnership has now added 33 runs.
89th over: Australia 324-6 (Smith 74, Cummins 16) Now the key battle of the morning: Steve Smith v Jasprit Bumrah. India’s master quick yesterday added 3-75 to his 21 wickets for the series. Smith has taken guard two inches outside leg stump to allow his now-customary stride across the pegs. He watches the first four warily, then flinches at the last with a half-shot, edging along the ground and through slips for four.
88th over: Australia 320-6 (Smith 70, Cummins 15) Akash Deep will bowl the second over, probably to allow Bumrah to charge in from his preferred end. Deep went to stumps with 1-59 from his 19 wickets and he starts with a maiden today.
87th over: Australia 320-6 (Smith 70, Cummins 15) Great start for Australia. Smith taps an easy single to settle the nerves and Siraj strays on the second allowing Cummins pounces with a flash blade that drives it to the rope. Now Cummins works a legside ball off his hip and a misfield – the bane of India’s fielding yetserday – allows three runs. Eight from the first half-over! A Smith single makes it nine from the full six
Steve Smith is walking to the crease 123 runs short of the magical 10,000 Test runs milestone. Of course the first two men to achieve that feat are the men whose names adorns the trophy up for grabs in this series: the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
Smith has his captain Pat Cummins at the other end and Mohammed Siraj warming up with the ball in hand. Here we go, folks…
Thankfully for Victorians under threat of bushfire, it’s a cooler day in Melbourne today – currently 18C and rising to 22C . We have cloud cover at the MCG and Ricky Ponting, having eyed off this pitch, predicting a perfect day for batting.
Will Steve Smith and Pat Cummins kick on this morning? Or will India’s batters – minus Shubman Gill who has been controversially dropped in favour of playing a second spinner in Washington Sundar – get the best of it on day two?
Players are warming up on the ground and action will soon be under way.
Photograph: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images
The Konstas blitzkrieg drew an extraordinary response from his cricket hero Virat Kohli who veered across three lanes of traffic to put the shoulder into the youngster.
Although Kohli tried to claim it as the teenager’s fault and Usman Khawaja played peacemaker, Kohli has been clipped 20% of his match fee – a small price to pay for an epic display of petulance. Konstas himself shrugged off the incident as “just cricket”…
Watch the Konstas highlights package with this as your soundtrack…
Here’s how local media saw the Konstas Kaos at the MCG…
For those who came in late, here’s how Geoff Lemon bottled the lightning of day one…
Preamble
Angus Fontaine
Greetings cricket fans! Welcome to day two of the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne.
Day one was a lot. Blast furnace heat across Victoria had wildfires raging across the state and sparked a batting inferno at the MCG as a cool 19-year-old opening batter from Sydney made his Test debut on cricket’s biggest stage, scorching his name into history and giving Australia the edge on day one of this crucial fourth Test.
Sam Konstas, a brash teenager with just a handful of first-class games behind him, lit up the MCG with a display of batting pyrotechnics that had even the great Sunil Gavaskar proclaiming: “we are witnessing the future of Test cricket.”
As Jack Snape captured yesterday, it was a triumph of the unorthodox. Ramp shots, reverse scoops, paddle slaps, murderous square cuts, slog sweeps. After playing and missing at five of his first six deliveries in Test cricket, Konstas went crazy as only callow youth can. It sparked a display of petulance from the King himself, as Virat Kohli initiated a midpitch spat after deliberately shoulder-charging the young Australian.
Slammin’ Sam’s innings lasted scarcely an hour and 65 balls but produced 60 of the most scintillating runs ever seen by a debut batter. Even the great Jasprit Bumrah, India’s weapon of mass destruction in this series, was battered out of the attack as Konstas bamboozled the Indian bowlers and gave Australia a crucial early ascendency.
Bumrah, who had not been hit for a six in 25 Tests across four years, was lifted into the grandstand twice inside an hour by Konstas. And yet, Bumrah returned later in the day to rip through Australia’s middle-order with three key wickets and put India back into the contest with Australians going to stumps at 311 for 6.
Day two should be another ripper. Play starts at 10.30am AEST so batten ‘em down and buckle ‘em up because it is GAME ON in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
