Ahmedabad:Travid Head missed on his maiden Test century in India by 10 runs and Marnus Labuschagne played himself into form with a sparkling fifty as fourth Test of Border-Gavaskar Trophy is heading for a drab draw on Day 5 at Narendra Modi Stadium here on Monday.
Australia have taken 67 runs lead with eight wickets in hand with the total reading 158/2 at tea. Just one wicket fell in the post-lunch session, Head falling for 90.
Earlier, India’s hopes hiked early in the day after Ravichandran Ashwin scalped makeshift opener Mattew Kuhnemann, trapping him plumb in front of the wickets.
This forced Captain Rohit Sharma to chuck the ball to all the three spinners who occasionally extracted turns and beat Labuschagne and Head. They, however, survived the brunt, but did not lose any opportunity to punish loose balls offered by Ashwin.
Ashwin was the star bowler, posing difficulties to Aussie batsmen and keeping India’s hunt alive to get wickets.
Head survived an LBW review against Ashwin, but India did not lose the DRS either.
Brief Scores: Australia 480 (Usman Khawaja 180, Cameron Green 114; R Ashwin 6-91) and 158/2 (Travis Head 90, Marnus Labuschagne 56*) lead India 571 (Virat Kohli 186, Shubman Gill 128, Axar Patel 79; Todd Murphy 3-113) by 67 runs.
