Chennai, Feb 24 : A warm welcome to one and all for the third day of the first Test between India and Australia from Chennai. No team has the clear advantage yet in this match. Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli have batted wonderfully and Australia will be going all out to break this partnership.

On day 2 Neither team has managed to grab the advantage as yet. That leaves us looking forward to tomorrow. There's also the small matter of Sachin resuming on 71. All that from 9:30 AM local time tomorrow. Do join us for that. Cheers and goodbye for now

It's been another excellent day of cricket. Australia managed to stretch their score to 380 in the morning and were on top after Pattinson dismissed the Indian openers in quick succession. India needed someone to guide them out of trouble and Tendulkar was just the man for it. He came in confidently striking three boundaries off the first four he faced. He went on to stitch together important partnerships with Pujara and Kohli to hand India a slender advantage. They still trail by 198 though and there is a lot of cricket to be played.

Pattinson: 'It was an unusual first innings for us, losing 10 wickets to spin. We wanted to scruff up the ball to get the reverse swing. If we can hit the wicket hard then there is some variable bounce on the track we could exploit. Sachin has played a fantastic innings but if we get another couple of wickets at this stage, we are into the tail and that's what we want to do.'

Match report - Day 2

Thanks to Sachin Tendulkar’s unbeaten 71, India are poised to challenge Australia’s 1st innings tally of 380. The Little Master looked on song as he scored with equal ease against the spin and pace of the Australian bowlers. During today’s play, Tendulkar went past the landmark of 7000 runs on home soil – Ricky Ponting is the only other batsman to aggregate 7000-plus runs at home. Tendulkar also completed 3500 runs against the Aussies and brought up his 27th 50-plus score against the men from Down Under.

Here are these and many more stats highlights from today’s play:

Michael Clarke’s 130 is the highest score by an Australian captain on Indian soil, obliterating Ricky Ponting’s 123 at Bangalore in 2008-09.
Clarke has now taken his career run aggregate to 7119, which puts him in eighth position on the list of most successful Australian batsmen, just ahead of Greg Chappell (7110).
R Ashwin (7/103) returned his best figures in Test cricket and first-class cricket, beating his 6/31 against New Zealand at Hyderabad in 2012.

Sachin Tendulkar (71*) has now made 27 scores of 50 or more against Australia, equalling England’s Jack Hobbs’ record.

Sachin Tendulkar, while on 60, completed 7000 Test runs on home soil. He became only the second batsman to do so, after Ricky Ponting, who aggregated 7578 runs in 92 Tests in Australia.
Tendulkar, while on 62, completed 3500 runs against Australia in Test cricket. He became only the second batsman, after England’s Jack Hobbs, to accomplish this feat.

Only three batsmen have aggregated more Test runs against a particular country than Tendulkar’s 3509 against Australia – Don Bradman (5028 vs England), Jack Hobbs (3636 v Australia) and Allan Border (3548 v England).

Sachin Tendulkar has now aggregated 947 runs in 15 innings (10 Tests) at Chennai – the most runs he has scored at any ground. Bangalore (869), Kolkata (862) & Mumbai Wankhede (847) come next.
Out of the six previous occasions when Tendulkar crossed fifty at Chennai, he went on to score a hundred five times!