'Super-Us-man' guides Australia to comfortable 255/4 on Day 1 of 4th Test

Usman Khawaja combined patience with grit to raise his 14th Test hundred that guided Australia to a comfortable 255 for four as a keen contest between bat and ball marked the opening day of the fourth and final match here on ThursdayAfter dominating the batters in the first three matches of the series the Indian spinners struggled to trouble the Australians with the Motera track as anticipated turning out to be a better wicketKhawaja Australias best batter on the tour was determination personified throughout his sixhour stay as he struck 15 boundaries in his unbeaten 104run knockAt stumps the Pakistanborn Khwaja had Cameron Green 49 for companyAlso Read All eyes on batting unit as India seek spot in WTC finalAs a southpaw neither does Khawaja have the panache of someone like a David Warner nor the brute power of a Matthew Hayden who was capable of executing slog sweeps fetching deliveries from wide outside the offstumpHis game maybe pretty low on aesthetics but is highly impactful as he came across as a batter who wouldnt try anything which is outside his comfort zoneAnything pitched on his legs was punished through the legside while the occasional cover drive would come out of the closet like one off Jadeja in the final sessionAlso Read WTC Final Will Hardik Pandya don the whites again Heres what BCCI has in mindOtherwise it was just playing the ball late and rocking on the backfoot while whipping Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja through the squareleg or midwicket regionIt was only fitting that an ondrive off Mohammed Shami 265 brought up what would be one of his most cherished Test hundreds that he celebrated with his nowcustomary leap in the airFor someone who faced racism during his early years with typical Asian stereotype jibes like Curry Muncher life did make Khawaja mentally tough and he has shone through time and again during his second coming be it Sydney Karachi Rawalpindi Delhi or now in AhmedabadIt did help that there was no devil on the Motera track and with no significant help on offer Indias spin troika of Ashwin 157 Jadeja 149 and Axar Patel werent as effective compared to first three gamesSave Shamis lethal reverse swing to get Peter Handscombe castled none of the other dismissals came off wickettaking deliveries and could be attributed to lapse of concentration on part of battersIt was a track where if one even got deceived in the air the slowness off the surface ensured that playing on backfoot became second line of defenceRun scoring wasnt easy but surviving and slowly building an innings wasnt difficult either as Khawaja showedTwice Australia lost backtoback wickets but prior to that and after that Khawaja remained a constant factorHe had partnerships of 61 for the opening stand with Travis Head 32 79 for the third wicket Steve Smith 38 and another 103 for the fifth wicket with Green who counterpunched towards the end of the dayThe runrate of 283 would show that scoring wasnt very easy save the first hour when Head hit Umesh Yadav for a flurry of boundariesThere is nothing in the track and Australia if they apply themselves well could post their best total of the seriesHead in fact must be feeling horrible as he undid all his good work in the first hour by playing an indiscreet shot He tried to chip Ashwin over midon without reaching to the pitch of the deliveryAshwin had just altered the length slightly and deceived Head who offered the easiest of catches to one of the worlds best fielders JadejaHead got a reprieve while batting on seven when wicketkeeper KS Bharath dropped a regulation catch off Umesh Yadavs bowling Yadav who usually invites criticism for his inconsistency was once again erratic as he gave a lot of boundary ballsOut of the seven boundaries that Head got half a dozen came from Yadavs oversThe end from which Shami bowled a lot of deliveries kept low and one such ball brought about the downfall of Marnus LabuschagneIt was an offcutter and Labuschagne wanted to play the square cut but dragged it back onto the stumps But then Khawaja took over and made sure Australia had their best opening day of the seriesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever