Ahmedabad/UNI: Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne kept Indias hope in check as Australia reached 73/1 at lunch on Day 5 of the fourth Test of Border-Gavaskar Trophy at Narendra Modi Stadium here on Monday.
Indias 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 Indias 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 73/1 (Travis Head 45*) trail India 571 (Virat Kohli 186, Shubman Gill 128, Axar Patel 79; Todd Murphy 3-113) by 18 runs
