Melbourne: India lost the overnight pair of Rishabh Pant and Ravidra Jadeja before reaching 244 for seven at lunch on the third day of the fourth Test against Australia here on Saturday.
India, who started the day on 164 for five and 310 runs in arrears, reduced the deficit to 230 and need another 31 runs to avoid follow-on.
Nitish Reddy and Washington Sundar were batting on 40 and 5 respectively when lunch break was called.
The talking point of the morning session will be Pant’s (28 off 37 balls) shot selection under the circumstances.
The third day’s MCG track is perhaps the best to bat on with green grass making way for a brownish tinge and old a Kookaburra hardly doing anything. Had Pant stuck around, there was no way he wouldn’t have scored big.
With Ravindra Jadeja (17 off 51 balls) for company, Pant did start well and got a few boundaries but then the urge to play the falling lap pull over long-leg brought about his dismissal.
When Pant tried it for the first time off Scott Boland, who came round the wicket, he was hit in the naval area and seemed to be in pain.
He got up but didn’t realise that Pat Cummins had placed one fielder at deep fine-leg and one at deep third man for both the conventional and reverse lap shot.
Without learning his lessons or caring about success percentage, Pant tried a similar shot but the extra bounce meant that the top edge flew to third man for a regulation catch.
“If there is a word called ‘worstest’, then this was one such shot,” former India skipper Sunil Gavaskar said on air.
But Reddy showed steely resolve as he started with a punchy off-drive off Nathan Lyon and also jumped down the track to loft him over for a straight six.
In the meantime, Reddy also lost his senior partner Jadeja, who was trapped leg-before by Lyon, but that didn’t deter the Visakhapatnam youngster from playing his shots and be watchful when the situation demanded.
