Ghosh, Rodrigues sweep Australia's spin threat away

Pure vibes.

"One, two, three, four, mic testing. One, two, three, four."

Richa Ghosh walked in and settled down in front of the microphone. She blew air into it when asked to give a sound check, eliciting laughter around the room, before speaking into it. The next few minutes were about having fun and reacting to the questions, with some cheekiness in the mix. Like you expect a 20-year-old to be.

Pure vibes.

Adira, a nine-year-old fan dressed in cricket whites, was merrily waving the India flag from the Garware Pavilion, which is above the Australia dugout. Unlike the opening day, where three stands were open to the public as opposed to just two on Friday, most of the 600 people (approx.) at the Wankhede Stadium were in that section.

The weather was kind. The hazy afternoon did not force you to search for shadows or the back-row seats despite the floodlights being on since the post-lunch session. Chauka laga re laga re laga [oh, there goes a four!], hooo haaa, hooo haa! accompanied almost every four. The youngsters in the middle kept them clapping, dancing, and cheering their hearts out.

Pure vibes.

Jemimah Rodrigues is no stranger to adverse situations, given the rocky phases she has faced in her brief career. She was replacing her best mate, Smriti Mandhana, in the middle. A horrible mix-up with Ghosh had seen Mandhana run-out for 74, but she paused in her walk back towards the dugout, turned towards Ghosh and gestured to her to forget about it, stay in the middle and play her game.

And so, Rodrigues and Ghosh, on Test debut, found themselves in the middle with India 147 for 3, still 72 runs behind Australia's first-innings total of 219, with an hour to go for lunch.

Australia's fast bowlers had struggled to maintain their lines and lengths. Captain Alyssa Healy was forced to turn to her spinners quite often on the day - 71 of the 100 overs of the day were bowled by spin. Rodrigues, fresh of a fifty on Test debut, was confident in getting her stride out - be it for off-drives or to defend the ball. Ghosh managed to pick spin and also adjusted to the variable bounce on offer. They felt that the sweep was the way to go on the surface.

Three of the four fours they hit in the period leading up to lunch were via the sweep shot - the conventional and the slog. They ensured that they got the front foot as close to the line of the ball as possible while trying to sweep; unlike Healy, who was beside the line of the ball and was bowled by one that kept low. The method Rodrigues and Ghosh followed allowed them to adjust to any variable bounce, and on the odd occasion they got the top edge on the sweep, it landed in the vacant spot at 45, behind square on the leg side.

In all, Rodrigues played the sweep to 18 balls and Ghosh opted for it eight times in their 113-run partnership off 187 balls. More importantly, they played out a combined six dot balls while attempting that shot, which meant Australia's spinners couldn't pin one batter down. "We decided to react to the ball. If we get the ball to sweep, we will sweep, if not we will defend," Ghosh laughed after explaining the pair's simple logic.

They even kept offspinner Ashleigh Gardner, who finished the day with 4 for 100 in 41 overs, at bay. Gardner was the major threat on a surface which had a tinge of grass but was predominantly bare and dry, often casting doubts in the batters' minds about their footwork. She got one to keep low and trap Harmanpreet Kaur - who went back - for a two-ball duck after Rodrigues chipped one to cover. She also trapped Yastika Bhatia lbw while sweeping.

"Ash [Gardner] is just a real, classical offspinner," Australia head coach Shelley Nitschke said later. "She gets a lot of revs on the ball. She is just continuously able to put the ball in a good spot and ask questions [of the batters], and with the revolutions she puts on the ball, she extracts whatever she can from the wicket.

"India showed there is plenty of runs out there if you can just be patient. At times we were not able to build the pressure, but they also were really patient and played the long game. When we gave them something to hit, they made sure that it went to the boundary. They showed us that they were patient and built some partnerships, which we didn't do in the first innings."

It was a fair assessment, as Rodrigues and Ghosh managed to hit 16 fours through their stay, each notching up a half-century. The partnership put India in the lead and the mini-wobble later magnified its importance. India lost 4 for 14 but were once again steadied by a patient alliance - an unbroken 102 - between Deepti Sharma and Pooja Vastrakar.

That Australia managed to squeeze in some quiet phases - like the hour leading up to tea, where they picked up those wickets, or the one after tea where they managed to bowl three successive maidens and give away just 20 in ten overs - did not faze India. Because their young guns created the vibes at the Wankhede, feeding off the few noisy fans in a pocket.

Adira goes to the Cross Maidan for cricket coaching and is a massive fan of Mandhana, but that Rodrigues and Ghosh helped India dominate another day of Test cricket at home will take time to sink in for her - and the other fans in the pocket.