Australia 260 (Renshaw 68, Starc 61, Umesh 4-32) and 285 (Smith 109, Ashwin 4-119) beat India 105 (Rahul 64, O'Keefe 6-35) and 107 (Pujara 31, O'Keefe 6-35) by 333 runs
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
Fortress India has been sacked. Or should that be SOKed? Not since 2012 had India lost a Test at home, and rarely in that stretch of 20 matches had they even been held to a draw. Last time Australia toured India for Tests they were crushed 4-0. They entered this match having lost their past nine Tests in Asia. Not since 2004 and the days of Gilchrist, McGrath and Warne had Australia won a Test in India. Not even Nostradamus could have seen this result coming.
Australia not only beat India, they thrashed them. Humiliated them. On a dry, turning pitch that should have suited India's spinners, Steven Smith scored the only hundred of the match and Steve O'Keefe took as many wickets as R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja combined. So many, in fact, that his 12 for 69 were the best figures ever by a visiting spinner in a Test on Indian soil. India were humbled for 105 and 107; never had they scored so few in a home Test loss.
The match was over inside three days, Australia the victors by 333 runs. The series is still alive, of course, but India have much to ponder over the next week, ahead of the Bangalore Test. It would be easy to look at pitch and suggest the toss played a significant role, but that would be unfair to Australia, who outplayed India in all facets of the game, and more than doubled their totals in both innings. In any case, Australia had won all four tosses back in 2013.
No, this a was a victory based on outstanding left-arm spin from O'Keefe, whose accuracy and ability to turn some deliveries but not others made him a constant threat; on a remarkable 109 from Smith in the second innings, which some observers said was the best hundred they had seen; on fielding that was not quite flawless but not far off it. And, yes, on what looked from the outside like a mental capitulation from India's batsmen in both innings.
Full report to follow
Australia have not won a Test in India for 12 years. India have not lost a home Test to anyone for four years. And neither of those things will be true for much longer. At tea on the third day in Pune, Australia were within sight of what would be a famous victory, a remarkable achievement that has been set up by a ten-wicket match haul from Steve O'Keefe and a century of immense character from Steven Smith.
Smith's 18th Test hundred - his fifth in consecutive Tests against India and his first on Indian soil - set India 441 for victory, which meant they would have to break the all-time record for the highest successful chase in Test history. At tea, after only 28.3 overs of batting, India were in a state of disarray. They appeared mentally defeated, a complete role reversal from Australia's previous tour in 2013.
At the break, India were 99 for 6, with Cheteshwar Pujara on 31 and Wriddhiman Saha having just been trapped lbw by O'Keefe on the stroke of tea. They needed a further 342 runs to pull off the impossible. Australia could sense that a drought-breaking win was nigh, only four wickets standing between this team and the golden achievement of an Australian Test win in India. It has not happened since Nagpur, 2004.
Again, O'Keefe was the destroyer. By tea, he had 5 for 33 to add to his six-wicket haul from the first innings. And as in the first innings, it was his accuracy and subtle variations in turn that caused the problems. He began the rot by having M Vijay lbw in his first over of the innings, and Nathan Lyon chipped in next over by spinning one back in to have KL Rahul lbw. Vijay and Rahul both wasted India's two reviews, which were spent inside six overs.
If India were to have any hope of a miracle win, they needed something special from Virat Kohli, but instead what they got was a captain who shouldered arms, expecting O'Keefe to turn the ball away, and instead lost his off stump. O'Keefe then tempted Ajinkya Rahane into lofting a catch to cover, and followed with the lbws of R Ashwin and Saha. No batsman besides Pujara had passed 20. The swiftness of the collapse was stunning.
And the story of the Test was summed up in the contrast in fortunes of the two captains: Kohli, a duck in his first innings and an ignominious exit for 13 in his second; Smith a hundred that some observers said was the best they had ever seen. Certainly given the unfamiliar turning conditions and the quality of India's spin attack, it was hard to imagine Smith had ever scored a more satisfying one.
He resumed on 59 and Australia with a lead of 298; by lunch on day three Smith been dismissed for 109 and Australia had been bowled out too - lunch having been delayed at nine-down - but India needed 441 to win. The highest successful Test chase was 418, achieved by West Indies against Australia in Antigua in 2003, when Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan scored twin match-winning hundreds.
Smith and Mitchell Marsh resumed with Australia's total on 143 for 4, but Marsh added only 10 to his overnight total before he pressed forward to Ravindra Jadeja and edged behind to be well taken by Saha for 31. However, there was enough lower-order support for Smith to ensure the total kept ticking over: he put on 35 with Matthew Wade and then 42 with Mitchell Starc.
Australia knew their best approach was to play their shots and build the lead as quickly as possible on a difficult surface. Wade struck two boundaries before he edged behind off Umesh Yadav for 20, and Starc pressed home the advantage further by clobbering three sixes and a couple of fours during his breezily entertaining 30 off 31 deliveries.
Smith played his natural game, using his feet and scoring freely on both sides of the wicket. He had ridden his luck on the second day, when he was dropped three times, but he made those opportunities count. He brought up his hundred from his 187th delivery and it continued a remarkable run of form against India: he scored centuries against them in all four of the Tests during the 2014-15 series in India.
Eventually, Smith's luck ran out when he went back and tried to pull Jadeja but was trapped lbw, and a review was unable to save him. But still Australia had more runs to come: Starc was caught in the deep off Ashwin, Nathan Lyon was trapped lbw to Umesh Yadav for 13, and Steve O'Keefe was the last man to fall, caught behind off Jadeja for 6.
Only one Australian partnership had failed to reach double figures, and that was the last one. Everyone had contributed, though nobody more than Smith.
