A stunning about-face with India defying recent history and a fading Australian attack required the home side to produce their best run chase in almost two decades to contemplate victory in the opening Test.

India enter day three to take a 1-0 lead in the series at 0-172 and already hold an overall lead of 218 runs with three days remaining, all of which are expected to end under sunny Perth skies.

The last time Australia managed a fourth innings target above 250 at home was at the SCG in 2006, when they were just two wickets down after reaching 288 against Africa South in Ricky Ponting’s 100th Test.

In a barely explainable contrast to the first day of the series in which 17 wickets fell and no batter reached 50, having rewarded the last three Australian batters for adding a 37 in the first session , India crossed 150 without loss.

Against a bowling team increasingly bereft of answers on a pitch that 24 hours earlier had offered only batting problems, Yashasvi Jaiswal (90no) and KL Rahul (62no) showed how it’s done.

Jaiswal lived up to his pre-tour reputation as a batting revelation, blending sublime timing as he filled gaps in the field that were particularly square offside, with innovations such as the ramp on slips and brute force with a few sixes.

Rahul, replacing regular skipper Rohit Sharma who remains on paternity leave, followed up his tenacious 26 as batting was a completely different proposition on the opening morning with only his second half-century in eight Test innings.

The pair’s near-perfect partnership is ahead of India’s best ever opening encounter against Australia on their rivals’ home ground, the 191 fashioned by Sunil Gavaskar and Kris Srikkanth at the SCG in 1985-86.

It is also already the eighth best first-wicket partnership among all visiting openers in Australia across almost 150 years of Test cricket.

From the moment Jasprit Bumrah completed a five-wicket haul in his first delivery of the second day, India dominated Australia’s hopes of falling behind in their bid to retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, already dependent on a batting lineup that misfired early. attempt.

And where Australia’s specialist hitters had barely been able to lay the bat on Bumrah when the field was a day younger, and the fielders found it an equally difficult task upon resumption today, India’s opening pair seemed to operate on a replaced surface.

Or against a cohort of quicks totally different from those who had dominated the first day.

Yesterday’s best performing Australian bowler, Josh Hazlewood, who claimed 4-29 from 13 immaculate overs on Friday, again appeared the most powerful and conceded only nine runs from his first 10 overs either side of tea .

However, the skill of extracting a nick which had characterized the first innings when all 10 Indian wickets fell to catches taken behind the stumps deserted Australia with no real chances being created over the course of over a batting session.

From the moment Jaiswal scored his first boundary in Test cricket on the Australian turf – a neat tuck of his hip in Mitchell Starc’s second over – the frenetic urgency that set in a day earlier was replaced by assured calm.

Perhaps it was due to greater familiarity with the conditions, perhaps it was the knowledge that they were ahead in the game, but India were clearly content to extend their lead gradually rather than incandescently .

This approach was also informed by the fact that the first phase of the Test was played in fast forward and India could potentially bat for two full days and still have enough time to force a result.

The first 50 stands of the Test came in the 15th over of the third innings, from which the Indian opening duo helped themselves to nine runs against the normally parsimonious Pat Cummins.

On a pitch that proved a boon for fast bowlers until India struck a second time, Cummins struggled to find rhythm and conceded runs at an unusual rate of almost four per over during both innings.

Jaiswal then became the first individual in the match to reach a half-century, the thrilling 22-year-old banishing memories of his first-innings duck with the first defining moment for Indian batting in this series.

Later in the same stride from Lyon, a single from Rahul took the pair to 100 runs, making them the first Indian openers to celebrate a century union in Australia since Virender Sehwag and Akash Chopra followed the 141 that they played at the MCG in 2003. -04 with 123 in the next Test at Sydney.

As a measure of Australia’s sudden helplessness with the ball today, it wasn’t until the home team’s 47th over of batting today that India felt compelled to deploy a fifth bowler, spinner Washington Sundar.

India were just 15 overs today before Australia tossed the ball to their third change option, Nathan Lyon, and just 24 overs when they dropped their sixth wild card player, Marnus Labuschagne.

But it was only on the last ball of the 41st over that Australia saw the closest they came to a chance, when Jaiswal aimed a big off-drive on Starc and the outside edge that resulted grazed Usman Khawaja’s fingertips to slip as he leaned forward languorously.

At that time, Jaiswal was 51 and just getting started.

Having missed that half chance, Australia could have grabbed another ball when Rahul went for a tight single only to be dismissed by his partner and could have been slightly short of his field had Steve Smith scored a direct hit.

But as shadows stretched across the ground and the collective spirit of Australians – so obviously vibrant after India’s dismantling for 150 yesterday – seemed to sag, the Indian openers turned the screw.

Jaiswal signaled his intention to open his shoulders with a scrappy shot off his pads that sent Starc over the boundary at backward square leg, before leaping down the field and launching an even bigger shot at Lyon who landed 25 rows back.

That strike took India’s lead beyond 200 and, with all 10 wickets still intact, a familiar air of invincibility began to build around their defense of the trophy.

It took just one delivery for their inspirational leader Bumrah on the second morning to resume his role as India’s troubleshooter-in-chief.

No need for a releaser, the Indian skipper landed the first ball on his characteristic probing length, which lured Australia’s last recognized batter, Alex Carey, into a defensive surge which he then attempted to abort, but not before if he had touched his bat.

With Bumrah and Test debutant Harshit Rana, 22, regularly pushing bowling speeds above 140 km/h, while Starc and Lyon repeatedly pushed speculatively first and withstood a barrage of second bouncers.

At one point, Starc, after fending off another uncomfortable short delivery from Rana towards the offside, good-naturedly said to his young IPL teammate “Harshit, I bowl faster than you…and I have a long memory.”

It was a ball from Rana that headed towards his ribcage that hit the mark for Lyon, sending a simple catch into a ravine in an act of pure self-defense.

At 9-79, Australia reached their lowest innings total against India, which remains the 83 they were bowled for when Kapil Dev tore his batting at the MCG in 1981.

This unwanted story was averted when Hazlewood (on 1) edged Bumrah to the left of keeper Rishabh Pant who, despite lunging at full length as the chance passed, failed to land a glove as he headed towards the boundary.

It would take India 14 more overs and another hour of toil to finally break that final wicket which yielded an invaluable 25 runs to take Australia beyond the embarrassment of a sub-100 total.

But their final score of 104 – completed when Starc bowled a record 26 innings in over two hours at bat – was the lowest in Test cricket since being bowled out for 91 by a Bumrah-less Indian attack in Nagpur last year .

This standard would not have been exceeded if Starc had not found the unwavering support of Hazlewood, who once again proved his batting skills after the defeat of the Australian top order.

In the last three instances where the team’s 10th wicket pair has produced the highest partnership of the innings, Hazlewood has been part of all of them.

As well as today’s 110-ball union with Starc, he was involved in adding 116 as a silent partner alongside Cameron Green against New Zealand in Wellington earlier this year, and 97 with Adam Voges, then a Test rookie, against the West Indies in Dominica in 2015.

While Australia was grateful for their final pair which reduced India’s lead below 50, they would also have noted with some concern that the demons of the first day appeared to have diminished in Saturday’s brighter sunshine in Perth.

And so it proved when the visitors’ batters headed to the middle after lunch today to strengthen their grip on the series opener.

NRMA Insurance Men’s Test Series vs India

First try: November 22-26: Perth Stadium, 1:20 p.m. AEDT

Second try: December 6-10: Adelaide Oval, 3 p.m. AEDT (D/N)

Third try: December 14-18: The Gabba, Brisbane, 11:20 a.m. AEDT

Fourth try: December 26-30: MCG, Melbourne, 10:30 a.m. AEDT

Fifth test: January 3-7: SCG, Sydney, 10:30 a.m. AEDT

Australian team: (first test only) Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey (wk), Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Nathan McSweeney, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc

Indian team: Rohit Sharma (c), Jasprit Bumrah (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant, Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna , Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar. Reserves: Mukesh Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed