Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul have bossed the Australian bowlers in the second session and taken India to 84/0 at Tea, with their lead swelling to 130 runs.
The Indians have found some batting stability after a long time in Test cricket, with Rahul batting on 34 off 70 at the end of the second session and Jaiswal on 42 off 88. There have hardly been any chances for the Australians, and on the few occasions they found the edge, the ball didn’t carry to the wicketkeeper or the slips.
Earlier, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood’s 11th-wicket stand ended right at the stroke of Lunch with Harshit Rana dismissing the former.
Starc grinded it out for 112 balls and scored 26 runs while Hazlewood stayed unbeaten on seven off 31 balls. The last-wicket stand lasted as many as 110 balls and produced 25 runs and Australia were all out for 104 runs.
Rana finished with figures of 3/48 in 15.2 overs on debut while Mohammed Siraj returned 2/20. The star for India, by some distance, was their incredible captain Jasprit Bumrah who recorded figures of 5/30 in 18 overs.
Rana earlier dismissed Nathan Lyon to reduce Australia down to their last wicket after Jasprit Bumrah struck with his first ball of the day with the all-important wicket of Alex Carey.
Those early strikes put India well on course to taking a big lead on Day 2 of the first Test in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy despite being all out for just 150 runs batting first on the first day.
Starc and Hazlewood nibbled a few runs off that lead though and slowed the game down to a crawl but India remain on top going into the second session.
Cricket fans could not have asked for a better start to the highly-anticipated Border-Gavaskar Trophy, with 17 wickets falling on the first day of play and setting up what is certain to be an absolute classic of a low-scoring Test match between India and Australia.
With Australia going into stumps at 67/7, they found themselves in a world of trouble at Stumps despite wreaking havoc with the ball in the early part of day’s play at the Optus Stadium in Perth.