Australia A hold advantage after 11-wicket day in Bengaluru

Beginning day three (4 September) on 42/1 in the second innings with an 11-run lead over India, Australia's two experienced men, Usman Khawaja and Travis Head added 51 runs in the first session before Khawaja was bowled by Mohammad Siraj on 40. The left-handed batsmen looked good to add a half-century to his first-innings ton, but his stay was cut short by Siraj, who picked up his ninth wicket of the match, having returned eight in the first innings.

Peter Handscomb, who joined Head after Khawaja's departure, could not stay at the crease for long and the duo could add only 17 runs before Krishnappa Gowtham got Handscomb caught off Ravikumar Samarth to reduce Australia 112/3.

When captain Mitchell Marsh was run out with the score 134/4 and the lead only 123 runs, Australia looked to be in a spot of bother. But any fears of a collapse were quelled by Head and Marnus Labuschagne (37) who shared a 50-run fifth wicket stand. Head also brought his half-century in the meantime before getting dismissed on 87 by Gowtham.

Australia were five down with 184 on the board but lower-order contributions from Alex Carey (10), Micheal Neser (25), Chris Tremain (25) and Brendan Doggett (17*) helped the visitors put up 292 in 83.5 overs and set India 262 runs for victory. Siraj took three wickets and finished with 11 in the match, while Kuldeep Yadav and Gowtham returned with two wickets each.

In reply, India suffered an early blow when Abhimanyu Easwaran was trapped lbw by Tremain for a duck in the third over with the team yet to open their account. Mayank Agarwal and captain Shreays Iyer then shared a 33-run stand for the second wicket to calm the nerves in the Indian camp before Iyer was caught by Kurtis Patterson off Jon Holland for 28.

Iyer hit two fours and three sixes in his whirlwind 21-ball counter-attacking innings. India lost no further wickets on day three as Agarwal (25*) and Ankit Bawne (6*) led their side to stumps at 63/2, still needing 199 runs for victory on the final day.

After the day's play, Tremain, who shared a 48-run ninth-wicket stand with Doggett, felt that the game was evenly poised. "I still think it's quite evenly poised. It is a hard wicket to score on and also a hard wicket to take wickets on," Tremain said.

"You can play on it, it's not impossible. The conditions aren't horrible. We did see a couple of balls misbehave, but they misbehaved in areas that weren't too threatening. We still have to turn up tomorrow with a full head of air and we still need to give a good crack to get a win."

Did Australia have a target in sight at the beginning of the day? "We felt 250 would have been comfortable and any more would have been nice," Tremain answered.

"It was a little bit disappointing when myself and Brendan Doggett were batting, we got to 250, 260 but we didn't get any further. I got out with a really bad shot and bang, the innings was over. So it was little bit disappointing that we got to our target and we could have done more but we didn't."

Australia did cross 250 and have already taken two Indian wickets and with the wicket playing tricks on the fourth day, it could be advantage Australia on Wednesday. "We are going to reassess and see how we're going to break up our wickets tomorrow and how we would like to go about taking them, but 250 was our goal and we surpassed that," Tremain said.