The second day of the deciding Test match of the Border Gavaskar Trophy 2016-17 turned out to be just as absorbing as the first day.
India finished the second day's play at 248-6 - still 52 runs short of Australia's first innings score of 300. Wriddhiman Saha and Ravindra Jadeja were unbeaten at the end of the day's play, and they will look to take their team well beyond the visitor's first innings total when they resume on Monday.
The Australian bowlers bowled with plenty of venom at the start of the day while the Indian batsmen took a cautious approach - putting a heavy price on their wickets.
However, it was surprising to see them employ the same strategy even in the second session - when the pitch was at its best for batting, the ball had become soft and there was very little happening for the bowlers.
The slow pace of batting hurt India in the final session as they lost four big wickets - despite having done all the hard work earlier in the day.
In the final session, the home team lost the wickets of Cheteshwar Pujara, Karun Nair, Ajinkya Rahane and Ravichandran Ashwin - and still were some distance from Australia's first innings total. Saha and Jadeja saw their team to the end of the day's play with a 27-run partnership.
India's reply to Australia's first innings score of 300 was piloted by KL Rahul, who survived a testing spell from the Australian quicks at the start of the day.
The 24-year old went on to score his fifth half-century of this series, before a rush of blood - after a brief exchange of words with Pat Cummins - resulted in his dismissal.
Courtesy his 60 in this innings, Rahul joined GR Viswanath, Virat Kohli and Murali Vijay as the only Indian batsmen to score five 50-plus scores in a Test series against Australia.
During the course of the day's play, Cheteshwar Pujara became India's highest run-getter in a Test season. India's one-drop batsman, who has scored 1316 runs in the 13 Test matches this home season, went past Gautam Gambhir's aggregate of 1269 runs, which was the highest aggregate runs by an Indian batsman in a Test season.
Though runs were hard to come by on the day, the Indian batsmen had answers to whatever the Australian bowlers dished out in the first two sessions of the day. However, in the final session of the day, the visitors clinched the upper hand, courtesy Nathan Lyon, who picked up four wickets in one unchanged spell of 14 overs.
Towards the fag end of the day's play - in what turned out to be Nathan Lyon's final over of the day - Ravindra Jadeja deposited the off-spinner into the stands to bring up 1000 runs in his Test cricket career. Jadeja has made headlines in recent times for how well he has bowled; what doesn't fall under the spotlight is how his batting has improved significantly in the last couple of years.
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