Ind vs Aus: Anything over 300 will be a tough total to chase, feels Pat Cummins

Australia pacer Pat Cummins feels that anything over 300 will be a tough total for India to chase on the concluding days of the third Test given that the pitch is deteriorating quickly at Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG).

With the odd-ball keeping low, the lead of 197 runs with eight wickets in the bag looks more than handy as the Aussies look to go for the kill.

"200 lead with eight wickets in hand on a wicket that is deteriorating pretty quickly, yeah great result. They are a good side, I'm sure they gonna bounce back. But in terms of getting the bowlers back out there for another day as they have bowled three days in a row those kinds of things will add up," Cummins said in the virtual press conference after the end of play on Saturday.

"Don't know whether he (Ravindra Jadeja) is going to bowl obviously Rishabh (Pant) being replaced straight away with Saha. So we'll see, the big thing is to keep that lead and get it over 300 odd runs. Hopefully, the wicket keeps deteriorating and make that a really tough total to score on day 4 or 5," he added.

Talking about removing Pujara for the fourth time in the series, Cummins said there was a little bit of help from the surface which worked in his favour. He went on to add that they will make things tough for Pujura in second innings too.

"Hard to say, the one today, I think it was a bit of assistance from the pitch it seemed to jump up a little bit but he is someone that you know you have to bowl a lot. I think we got ahead around this series for him to score runs. We gonna make it as hard as possible whether he bats for 200 or 300 balls, we will just try to bowl good ball after good ball," he said.

Coming to the ground fielding which helped them to get three run-outs, Cummins said it was a result of the work they have done before the third Test.

"That does not happen often. I thought both Josh's (Hazlewood) and Marnus' (Labuschagne) direct hit run-outs are huge, especially getting a top-order batsman (Hanuma) Vihari out of nowhere. In between the Test, we did a quite bit of work on it. I think not only the run-outs the others too were also fantastic on the field. Marnus and Wade taking balls on the body, really good team effort today," the pacer said.

(ANI)