'We've been doing right things for sessions but not for days'

Peter Siddle finally came up with a performance that was he was expected of all this tour. Although he may have found his rhythm a bit late in the day, his five-wicket haul (5/71) on the fourth day here had helped Australia salvage the situation that appeared to be slipping away completely on Saturday.

The paceman discussed his bowling, the surface and Australia’s chances in the match.    

Excerpts:

Is the trophy slipping away?

Yeah, obviously. Losing a day, the first day, makes it a shorter game. At the moment, we’re still behind; three wickets down (in the second innings) and it’s going to be hard. I think the first session is going to be big for us tomorrow morning; try as hard as we can to score runs and not lose too many wickets. It’s probably going to be hard work for us to get the win from here. It’s a matter of still fighting and putting up a good challenge here.

Are the big partnerships from Indian batsmen making the difference?

Yes, that’s right. We know we’ve been doing things right for sessions but not for days. I think that’s been the difference. I think the way we started yesterday afternoon wasn’t ideal. Having 400 on the board, you want to try and start well. You want to get a couple of early wickets and put a little bit of pressure back on. But obviously, to their credit the boys batted well at the top there and took it away to build that pressure.

Was the ball swinging more today?

I think so. I think from yesterday we knew that we had to slow the run-rate down to put a bit of pressure back on India. I think that’s what the difference was. We slowed the run-rate, we had some good (bowling) partnerships throughout the first session which made it hard for India to score. When that happens, we know we can create chances and that’s we did. That’s something we’ve done all series but we just haven’t been able to do it long enough. I think it shows that when we get things right, we can be very competitive and put the pressure on. But we’ve been off and that hurts.

Do you think Aussie spinners could have done better?

Well, it’s hard to say. I guess you can say that but then you can say that the Indian batters have batted really well against our spinners. (MS) Dhoni in the first match was outstanding, the two boys (Cheteshwar Pujara and M Vijay) with the partnership in the last match (in Hyderabad), and the same happened here again at the start. I think once we’ve broken those big partnerships, the spinners have played unbelievable role for us. They’ve built up a lot of pressure and we’ve been able to get the wickets; whether it was them or the quicks at the other end.