Steve Waugh has been lucky with the toss on this tour of India. For the third time in four matches, the Australian skipper called right at the toss. However, all luck involved ended there. From then on it was a masterly display of skill on the part of the Aussies. In a 90 over deluge that yielded 413 runs, despite the loss of eight wickets, the visitors took the attack to the opposition. Steve Waugh led the way with a cracking 109 and Ricky Ponting was not far behind with 102.

Earlier in the day, a spell of reasonably steady, if not penetrating, bowling from Jammu & Kashmir left arm seamer Surendra Singh and Gujrat mediumpacer Rakesh Patel saw Australia reduced to 25/2. With Michael Slater (19) and Justin Langer (4) dismissed cheaply, Sourav Ganguly must have thought the tide was finally turning in the home side's favour. No such luck.

Mark Waugh found his silken touch early on and kept the fielders on their toes with some sizzling drives both sides of the wicket. After spending a few minutes assessing the conditions Mark Waugh cut loose, driving anything that was full with gay abandon. Reaching 62 quickly, (79 balls, 9 fours, 1 six) it was only an inspired bit of bowling that stopped the younger Waugh dead in his tracks. Narendra Hirwani, who had come in for a bit of stick, let rip a googly pitched well wide of the stumps. Mark Waugh playing for the orthodox legspinner went back and tried to cut. Rapped on the pad, he was well and truly leg before wicket.

Even the departure of Mark Waugh did not stop brother Steve. Not losing a beat, the Australian captain found an able partner in Ricky Ponting. With the agile Tasmanian at the crease, the flow of runs seemed to increase as singles were converted into twos and twos to threes. When the ball was even a bit short of a length, Ponting was on to the back foot in a flash, cutting hard. In that respect, Steve Waugh proved to be an ideal foil. Using his feet well, the captain took on the spinners, dancing down the wicket and lofting the ball over the infield. Steve Waugh mixed that line of attack with some lusty heaves over midwicket and the bowlers were thoroughly confused. Unable to hold their line and length, things went wrong.

Ganguly ran out of ideas when the partnership blossomed just as he had in the Mumbai Test when Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden were on song and resorted to some very negative tactics. Bowling left arm spinner Sridharan Sriram from over the wicket to the right handers, Ganguly attempted to stem the rot by packing the leg side with six fielders. At the end of the day, with the score over 400 in just 90 overs, made at a run rate in excess of four and a half runs an over, one can safely say that none of Ganguly's plans worked.

The Steve Waugh-Ponting partnership put a few things in perspective. On flat wickets that assist the bowlers very little, the Indians are going to struggle to break partnerships. In this case, Waugh 110 (167 balls, 17 fours, 4 sixes) and Ponting 101 (136 balls, 14 fours, 1 six) put on 171 runs for the fifth wicket.

Young Bradley Haddin, drafted in to bolster the wicketkeeping department played some crisp shots, helping himself to a quickfire 24 (23 balls, 4 fours) towards the end of the innings. The spinners came in for a lot of stick, with Hirwani (two for 96 off 18 overs) suffering the most. Sarandeep Singh with 4/103 off 23 overs would be reasonably happy given the circumstances. Either way, there will be no one more content than the Australian captain. With a healthy total on the board, it is likely that he will declare overnight and have a go at the batsmen first thing in the morning.

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