Phil Hughes faces Test axe yet again after scoring duck against India in Hyderabad
by: Peter Badel
From: News Limited Network
March 04, 2013 11:35PM
EMBATTLED Phil Hughes risks being dropped for the third time in his career after his latest duck left Australia on the brink of an embarrassing innings defeat in the second Test against India.
At stumps on day three, Australia (2-74) are going down the gurgler, still trailing by 192 runs after India's innings of mass destruction finally ended at 503 at Rajiv Gandhi Stadium.
First-Test tormentor Ravi Ashwin struck twice in the final session, bowling David Warner (26) and Hughes (0) around their legs to leave Ed Cowan (26) and Shane Watson (9) fighting in the Hyderabad furnace.
Classy Indian No.3 Cheteshwar Pujara, who crunched a sublime 204 yesterday, turned up the heat, saying the tourists needed to be mentally tougher to succeed on the sub-continent.
"They need to apply themselves," he said.
"They don't know how to go about the turning tracks. They know their strengths and we are trying to find out their weaknesses.
"So far we have been successful so our spinners have to continue with what they are doing."
Today is D-Day for Australia's batsmen. Perform, and they might pull off Mission Impossible and save this Test.
Perish, and some careers may go bust before the Ashes.
Hughes is fast perishing. In his third incarnation as a Test batsman, the 24-year-old impressed against Sri Lanka last summer but he is struggling to cope with the suffocating walls of spin in his maiden series on Indian soil.
Coming to the crease at 1-56, Hughes lasted just nine balls before he played on attempting to sweep Ashwin.
The pint-sized left-hander now has scores of 6, 0, 19 and 0 at an average of 6.25 at the mid-point of this four-Test series.
And while the size of the 16-man touring party may save Hughes for the third Test, his hopes of being retained for the Ashes in June are diminishing with every failure.
The former NSW opener has already been dropped twice in his Test career. Australia's selectors will be reluctant to order a third demotion, for they would fear Hughes may never be back.
But in the data-rabid game that is cricket, every batsman knows their indisputable currency is runs, and plenty of them.
Hughes is simply not getting enough.
He spent the winter re-shaping his technique to open up leg-side scoring options but the reality is Hughes has not looked comfortable employing strategies to combat spin on Indian decks.
As he trudged back to the pavilion yesterday, his Test average had dropped to 33.25 from 22 Tests. Since his return, he has managed scores of 86 and 87 against Sri Lanka, but the Test ton he is craving with his beefed-up style still beckons.
If the Australians are to have any hope of reclaiming the Ashes, they need solidity, consistency and durability in all conditions from their No.3.
Not that Hughes has been Robinson Crusoe on this tour.
The brilliance of Michael Clarke aside, the top four of Cowan, Warner, Hughes and Watson have all under-performed. Of their 12 collective innings before the second dig yesterday, just one, Warner's flaky 59 in Chennai, has yielded a half-century.
To underline the profligate batting, Australia has slumped to 3-126, 3-65, 4-63 and 2-56 in their first four outings this series. Before yesterday, Clarke had contributed 29.3 per cent _ almost a third _ of Australia's runs.
It was a mixed day for the Australians yesterday, with besieged spinners Glenn Maxwell (4-121) and Xavier Doherty (3-131) bouncing back from their day-two mauling to earn a scintilla of credibility.
At 1-387, India looked like scoring 700. But Test debutant Maxwell and Doherty claimed seven wickets yesterday as the hosts lost 7-103 in the middle session to leave Australia's batsmen staring at Mt Everest.
Doherty, who also took two fine catches yesterday to help remove MS Dhoni and Pujara, conceded Australia face an uphill battle to avert a 2-0 series deficit.
"We came in today knowing we were up against it and we needed to put in a better day than yesterday to eventually knock them over," he said.
"Today we took nine for 190 or something like that (9-192), which was a pleasing effort.
"But the damage was done yesterday so there's still a lot of work for us to do to get ourselves back into the game."
Doherty said he was relieved to finish with three wickets after figures of 0-124 from 42 overs at one stage.
"It was starting to look that way (like he would go wicketless)," he said.
"Things just didn't seem to be going my way.
"I was trying to work out my Test bowling average there at one stage because I came into the game at a hundred (three wickets at 102 in two matches).
"In the last five or six overs, it was just more pleasing how the ball started to come out. It did take a while for it to take a bit of rhythm.
"To get a couple of wickets was nice as well."
Australia can learn lessons from India's top-order. Murali Vijay (167) and Cheteshwar Pujara (204) provided the perfect Test-match template, batting with patience then panache and finally power to grind Australia into the Hyderabad dust.
Vijay and Pujara's second-wicket stand of 370 was the third-highest partnership against any Australian team in Test cricket's 136-year history.
After lunch, India collapsed, enabling Doherty and Maxwell to hit back.
The tourists will wake today determined to move mountains.
But with 192 runs still to knock off, Australia, climbing Everest, are in the death zone.
