Partly to do with the incosistency with the Indian pacers.Yeah Aussies have the knack of scoring fast on this pitch despite losing frequent wickets, whereas at no stage did India ever manage that. Otherwise our lead would have been close to 100 and we would be in a very dominant position right now.
There's basically no way to get him out unless he makes a mistake.Just think you gotta go back to basics with Smith more than anything else. Good line on the 4th or 5th stump. Tight offside field and ensure he does not get the singles that get him going so much. He may still score runs but at least you can plan your field and ensure he will get out if he makes a mistake. At the moment, with all his moving around the crease, teams are getting sucked into trying too many different things.
2nd innings of the last Test saw Smith failAs it stands right now the only non-Smith Australian batsmen with averages over 30 for the series are at the crease. Only just there for Handscomb too. Renshaw has the second most runs for the team and that's 232 @ 29.
India have Rahul and Pujara who have both had excellent series, and that's really the difference between the sides to now. The main spinners have very similar records - 40 @ 24.65 for Jadeja/Ashwin and 38 @ 23.18 for Lyon/O'Keefe - and the Indian seamers have more than matched it with Australia as well. But whenever Smith hasn't made runs, Australia's batting has failed. So one of these two or Marsh really has to do something special to make a game of it.
Clean shaven Maxwell is always Best Maxwell.Maxwell has gotten rid of the stubble.