Usman Khawaja’s recovery could determine the outcome of Ahmedabad

“I thought really hard today about minimizing the lead, obviously they don’t have any Shreyas [Iyer] Batting so we could have a change of innings, which was nice later in the day.

Loading

Carey credited Kuhnemann with raising his hand to replace Khawaja in the archetypal awkward little session before the end.

“He immediately raised his hand and did a fantastic job,” said Carey.

“It probably wasn’t his day with the ball but all the guys are definitely going to get him for raising his hand tonight. We know taking on this new ball against Indias Quicks or their spin tonight is a tough one.”

Carey observed Kohli up close and said the former India captain had shown impressive mental discipline to consistently play within his means.

“No wonder he got into a decent trajectory and grew up and showed how to really do it,” Carey said. “He’s a great player and didn’t really give us a chance.

“We knew it was going to be tough bowling for Virat. We contained him as best we could and tried to take wickets around him.”

Two grueling days in the field reminded us that, as Steve Smith pointed out before the series, the better batting wickets made in India required a total of 600 first innings – Australia’s 480 wasn’t quite as high.

“We wanted to get more than 480 points, from a great start where we were, for Usman to hit like he did, we wanted to increase that total,” Carey said. “I think the tail did a great job finding us another 80-100 runs.

“Cameron Green’s innings have been great and he’ll want to go bigger next time. But I think every time you get a decent result you put a little pressure on in the dressing room then go big and some top quality players for India have done that. We would have wished for more.”

News, results and expert analysis from the sports weekend are sent out every Monday. Sign up for our sports newsletter.