Timber!

For the 7th time in the last 8 innings, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir put on a a 50+ partnership. This time they kept going and going to the tune of 182 runs before Sehwag's conscience got the better of him and he got out. At that point in time Sehwag had blazed away to 90 runs off just 121 balls, uncharacteristically with just 8 fours. Gambhir was no slouch with the bat either, reaching 86 off just 115 balls, with 6 fours and a thundering six (a marginally better strike rate than Sehwag's, actually).

The startling (and refreshing) thing about their partnership was the willingness to look for ones and twos. Of the 182 runs scored by them, off just 39.1 overs, only 62 runs came in boundaries. In other words, they ran 120 runs between them, often stealing singles from under the in-fielder's noses. Ponting lost his temper at one point when Sehwag clearly edged the ball to the keeper but did not walk. Ponting was seen having a very animated conversation with Sehwag, asking him to walk, I suppose. Strange that the very same Ponting stoutly defended Andrew Symonds when he did not walk in the Sydney Test match. What's good for the goose has to be good for the gander, too, don't you think?

When Sehwag got out, MS Dhoni filled the breach and played the rest of the innings as if it were the middle portion of an ODI. Perfect. Then when Gambhir got out after a wonderful and richly deserved century, Sourav Ganguly came in to continue the left-right theme. All 6 of India's partnerships in this Test that yielded more than 50 runs featured a left-right combination. Do you suppose Dhoni reads my blog?

The Aussie innings began with the tempo of a gunslinger firing away his last bullets. Matthew Hayden was in a hurry. He was batting in a rage, it seemed, intent on bullying every ball to the fence. But 516 runs is a huge target to get and merely swinging for the fences would not get them there. There was more than a touch of desperation about the batting but Dhoni did not flinch. It would have been easy to spread the field and hope for a mistake but this man was borne out of a different mould. He threw the ball to Harbhajan, who immediately came around the wicket. Hayden went to sweep, missed, and was out LBW. A couple of balls later, Simon Katich drove without getting to the pitch of the ball and perished to a wonderful diving catch by Sachin Tendulkar (his 99th in Tests). After the tea break Michael Hussey went to pull a short ball that kept low, missed and was trapped in front of the middle stump. Australia's last hope was Ricky Ponting.

The two bowlers who have tormented Ponting the most in the past few years, since his ascendancy to the upper echelons of world cricket, are Harbhajan Singh and Ishant Sharma. Dhoni immediately brought Sharma back. What followed was a master class in bowling to Ponting, backed by imaginative captaincy. Ball after ball was pitched up, inviting the drive. Dhoni kept just one slip, but had a short cover and a short mid-wicket in Ponting's eyeline. Ponting likes to thrust his pad forward and bat around it, but the two fielders ensured that he did not bring his bat down with a full flourish. Having set him up, Sharma bowled an in-cutter from short of a good length. Ponting had thrust his pad forward, and the bat came down outside the line of the ball. The ball slipped through the gap, hitting middle and off, uprooting the off-stump, to trigger wild celebrations. I suspect the celebrations were just as wild at Mohali, too.

The score was 52 for 4, and Australia was effectively shut out of the Test match. A few overs later, Shane Watson departed to Harbhajan (3 for 3 at that point) and the Aussies had been reduced to thinking solely about survival. Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin pushed and prodded their way to the close of play, scratching around the crease, only occasionally able to stamp their authority with booming shots.

The pitch is still a good one to bat on, but the weight of the runs required and the overs still remaining will weigh heavily on the Australians. The Aussies know that it is possible to bat out a whole day against the Indians at Mohali - after all as recently as 2005 Pakistan got out of jail with a similar effort and the wicket-keeper was closely involved on that day, too. I saw that match, but the bowlers in this match are superior to the ones who bowled in that one (I am comparing their forms and skills, not overall career graphs) and I don't anticipate it happening again.

The Aussies will resist stoutly on day 5, but in the end will come up short. Way short.