Barely five minutes remained till close of play on Day Four. If the field didn’t smother Ishant entirely, the lopsided scoreboard must have. Lyon had just taken his third wicket, that of VVS Laxman, and India were five down for 166. India could have claimed equality on second-innings points, for Australia had declared on more or less the same total — 167 for five. So vast was the first-innings difference, however, that they could do so and set India a target of 500.

With this cushion, and the luxury of a 3-0 series scoreline, the Australian bowlers may have been forgiven if they had relaxed a little, even subconsciously, and allowed a little bit of laxity to creep into their lines and lengths. Not a chance.

Michael Clarke simply wouldn’t allow it. He had worn a miffed expression at the time he declared, possibly directed at Brad Haddin’s pace of scoring, which might have eaten a maximum of ten minutes from the endless stretch of time that India had to bat out.

No breathing space

The skipper’s desire to give India absolutely no breathing room rubbed off on all his bowlers, most notably on Ryan Harris. At the WACA and in the first innings here, he had blended into the background in Australia’s pace successes, with Ben Hilfenhaus and Peter Siddle taking the big wicket-hauls and James Pattinson’s spells in the first two Tests still fresh in the memory. In India’s second innings here, Harris showed why Michael Clarke had enthused so much about his return to the side ahead of the Perth Test, calling him one of the best fast bowlers he’d ever played alongside.

Out of the 84 balls Harris delivered to the Indian batsmen, 73 were dot balls.

Considering that he bowls a straighter line, and even fuller length, than the other two fast men (40 per cent of his Test wickets are bowled or LBW, compared to 31 per cent for Siddle and 33 per cent for Hilfenhaus), he must have tread a very fine line, between making the batsmen play and bowling too close to their pads. All this he did at high pace, consistently in the 140s, while putting a pair of fragile knees through a serious pounding, barreling through that delivery stride from various points on the bowling crease.

Harris picked up the first wicket of the innings, teasing Gautam Gambhir with his angle into playing that fatal poke of his one last time in the series and producing the edge through to Brad Haddin behind the stumps.

Late in his second spell, Harris had his second wicket, Rahul Dravid reaching out to a wide outswinger and nicking to gully. It was a strangely expansive stroke from Dravid, perhaps the result of scoring off only five of the 41 balls he faced from Harris. It had been a searching examination, Dravid having to keep a wary eye out at all times for the indipper searching for that gap between bat and pad, interspersed among balls that straightened from a wide-of-the-crease release point and the odd one directed into the blockhole.

In between, Virender Sehwag ended the series as he had begun it, with a streaky half century, to sandwich the scoring vacuum in the middle. In Hilfenhaus’s first three overs, he found the boundary four times, three times off the outside edge. One of these flew at catchable height through where most captains would have placed third slip while defending 500. Clarke, however, had stationed only two men in the slips. Siddle came on in the eighth over, and for once didn’t strike immediately. Instead, Sehwag smoked him for three fours through the point-cover arc.

Lyon heart

Clarke then brought on Lyon, banking on the theory that Sehwag’s utter lack of respect for off spinners (he respects them even less than he does other bowlers) might prompt a daft shot. Sehwag smacked Lyon for two fours in his second over, a lash through the off side off a long-hop and a swat over mid off to bring up 50. Off the first ball of Lyon’s fifth over, however, Sehwag lost it, running down the pitch in a mad hurry, getting too close to a full toss and slicing it high into the air, Ricky Ponting getting under it at short cover. It’s hard to prove, but there may not have been another batsman in Test history to get out twice in the same match to full-tosses.

In the eleventh over of his spell, Lyon struck again. After a bright beginning to the series, Sachin Tendulkar has faded away. Here, he faced 34 balls for 13, and was caught at short leg playing what appeared to be a premeditated forward defensive.