India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Controversial dismissal ends Rahul's grind, IND 51/4 at Lunch

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Starc is not being replaced by anyone, he is bowling his fifth over and the only run that comes in it, quite frustratingly for Padikkal, is a wide he bowled third ball. Padikkal did miss out on a couple of dead straight deliveries from Starc in that over though. Starc then bangs it in fifth ball, Padikal rides the bounce and sends it to gully one bounce. Still no runs. Then a pin-point yorker from Starc, Padikkal defends it to mid off. He is on nought off 17 balls now, Rahul on eight off 30.

India 14/1 in 9 overs

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: And he was beaten soundly twice in that fourth over from Mitchell Starc. Padikkal defends the first ball to cover, leaves the second. Then Starc gets the third ball to hone into the middle stump at length before leaving Padikkal last ball, the batter is beaten which is probably the best possible result for him. More away swing fourth ball and Padikkal is beaten on a booming straight drive. He then lets go of the fifth ball and defends the sixth to mid on. He is on nought after 11, Rahul on six off 24.

First change for Australia and there is no respite for India. Hazlewood goes off... only to be replaced by Pat Cummins.

India 11/1 in 7 overs

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Starc vs Rahul is turning out to be quite a contest. Starc has been enticing Rahul into playing a big offside driving, gets the third and fourth balls to move away from the batter last minute. But Rahul is not in T20 mode, doesn't even bother being too agressive, he lets the third ball go and defends the fourth. He then hits the fifth down to the ground to slip and then takes a single off the last ball. Good stuff thus far from Rahul. Just brilliant Test cricket overall with Starc and Hazlewood remaining relentless. And Pat Cummins hasn't even sent in a single delivery yet.

Rahul on four off 18, Padikkal yet to get off the mark after facing five balls.

India 9/1 in 5 overs

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: And it comes for KL Rahul, who has been patient and watchful thus far. Hazlewood finishes the fourth over with a half-volley, Rahul pushes it out offside and runs three. This is a real baptism by fire at the moment for the Indian batters. Starc and Hazlewood forcing them to play nearly everything. Padikkal kept Starc out and that third over ended up being a wicket-maiden.

India 8/1 in 4 overs

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Jaiswal drives on the up first ball of Starc's second over and perishes. Starc goes somewhere between full and length outside off, tempts Jaiswal into coming forward and he falls for it hook, line and stinker. Outside edge and debutant Nathan McSweeney takes the catch at gully.

Jaiswal c McSweeney b Starc 0 (8)

India 5/1 in 2.1 overs

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Well Starc did bowl Rory Burns around his leg with the first ball of the last Australian summer in the Ashes at the Gabba. He went towards Jaiswal's leg this time as well but it ended up swinging that way and went well out of reach for Carey as well to the boundary. Starc makes Jaiswal play everything but the opener meets them all with nice soft hands. A no ball off the fifth ball gives another run, Jaiswal yet to get off the mark at the end of that over.

India 5/0 in 1 over

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: All right then, enough talk, we have some Test cricket to play. Yashasvi Jaiswal has taken strike and the first ball he faces in a Test match in Australia will be from Mitchell Starc. KL Rahul at the other end.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Dr Richard Walley, Aboriginal Australian musician, writer and activist for the indigenous tribes of the country, gives a rousing welcome to the two teams to Perth. This is followed by India's national anthem and then Australia's. You can feel it in the air now...

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Sunil Gavaskar, who captained India in 47 Tests, and Allan Border, Australia skipper in 93 Tests, bring out the trophy that is named after them. This will be followed by the two sets of players for the national anthem. Quite an atmosphere being built here at the gleaming Perth Stadium. They do know how to hold their sporting competitions in this country.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: KL Rahul's body hasn't been kind on him and that means that he has had to make do with playing wherever it is that he can fit, instead of making one position his own. One has to remember that Rahul was in utterly scintillating form in ODIs and Tests before his latest stint on teh sidelines which started at the end of the second Test against England at home earlier this year. He had slotted into the lower middle order at the time and played in that position again in the series against Bangladesh and New Zealand. Now, he is back at the top. Rahul has eight of Rahul's nine Test centuries have come away from home though, and one of those in Australia.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: So this is a gist of what the two skippers had to say at the toss.

Jasprit Bumrah: “We are going to bat first, looks like a good wicket. Very confident with our preparation. We played a Test match here in 2018 so we know what to expect. The wicket gets quicker. Nitish makes his debut. We have 4 quicks and Washi is the lone spinner.”

Pat Cummins: “We were 50-50, either way we are pretty happy. Feel well placed, pretty fresh. Any format we (India-Australia) play seems fiercely fought. Nathan McSweeney makes our debut at the top of the order.”

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: As stated earlier, McSweeney is making his debut and will open the batting with Usman Khawaja.

Australia XI: Usman Khawaja, Nathan McSweeney, Marnus Labuschagne, Steven Smith, Travis Head, Mitchell Marsh, Alex Carey (wk), Pat Cummins (C), Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Well how about this, India have left out both Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja and gone with Washington Sundar as their lone spinner. That, along with the inclusion of Reddy gives them a long batting lineup. But one just wonders how much they will regret leaving both their premier, experienced spinners out. Devdutt Padikkal filling in for Shubman Gill at No.3 and Dhruv Jurel playing as a specialist batter at No.6. No place for Sarfaraz Khan.

India XI: KL Rahul, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Devdutt Padikkal, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant (wk), Dhruv Jurel, Nitish KumarReddy, Washington Sundar, Harshit Rana, Jasprit Bumrah (C), Mohammed Siraj

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Jasprit Bumrah has won the toss and he says that India are batting first.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: All right Ravi Shastri is making the Perth Stadium shake with his voice. Pat Cummins and Jasprit Bumrah are out there in their Test blazers, as are Allan Border and Sunil Gavaskar and the match referee of course. Here we go!

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: All right it's confirmed now! Virat Kohli has handed Nitish Kumar Reddy his debut cap while Ravichandran Ashwin has done the same for Harshit Rana. Surely SIraj is playing as well and so that is effective a five-man pace attack for India.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: This isn't how it was expected to go. India played 10 Tests in this ongoing season, five at home and five here in Australia. They needed to win five and draw one to cement a spot in the WTC Final and the first part of that criteria was assumed to be a done deal considering their invincibility at home. That was reiterated in the utterly ridiculous measures they took to force a win out of the Kanpur Test against Bangladesh. And then, that air of invincibility combusted spectacularly as they ticked off a number of unwanted firsts in a 3-0 defeat at home to New Zealand. That now means that India need to win four of the upcoming matches in Australia to qualify for the WTC Final. Easier said than done, to put it mildly.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: All right Cheteshwar Pujara has made his presence felt in the series already, albeit from the commentary box. Pujara will be in the comms box for this series, having pretty much lost his place in the Indian Test side. Pujara tiring the Australian fast bowlers and sucking their souls played a huge role in India winning the last two tours. In fact, this is the first time in this century that India are travelling to Australia without a player in that mould at No.3, having played with either Rahul Dravid or Pujara in that position.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Travis Head has hit a purple patch in all formats in the last few years and few teams have felt the heat of that more than India. He was the heartbeat of Australia's victory in the 2023 World Cup final against India, scoring 137 runs in 120 balls as Pat Cummins' men silenced the home favourites. Before that, he smashed 235 runs in six innings at an average of 47.00 in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in India. If Australia are to gain an early advantage in this series, surely a big score from the lower middle order by Head will go a long way

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: ... in the Australian camp and it is one that is not at all surprising. Darren Lehmann has presented Nathan McSweeney with his first Baggy Green.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Well, the numbers reflect the memories in the case of Rishabh Pant in Australia. He has scored a whopping 624 runs at an average of 62.40 in 12 innings at a healthy strike rate of 72.13 with one century and two quite legendary half-centuries.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: It has been topsy turvy for Indian batters off late but the one steady port in the storm has been Rishabh Pant. Pant may be better known for being the life and blood of India's utterly unbelievable 2020/21 series win in Australia but he also made the most of a tired Australian bowling lineup in 2018/19 as well. Pant scored a majestic 159 not out in the final Test of that series at the SCG while Cheteshwar Pujara made a towering 193 off 373 balls at the other end. He first shared an 89-run stand with Pujara and then an unbeaten 204-run stand off just 224 balls which broke the backs of the already deflated Australians.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Both of India's series wins in Australia on their last two tours came under Ravi Shastri. Since then, Rahul Dravid came and went in the role and now, India have Gautam Gambhir at the helm. The ODI series loss to Sri Lanka last month and the 3-0 thrashing at the hands of New Zealand has meant that Gambhir's tenure hasn't exactly gotten off to a good start. But this is what Shastri had to say to Gambhir ahead of the Australia series: "My first message to him would be to keep calm. Don't let outside elements influence you in any way. Because of that, don't get into a position where knee-jerk reactions happen. Be calm and understand your players; you will see them in match situations. You will see them in India, and you will see them overseas. You will notice what it takes for a player to tick. You will understand team situations where one player might be better than the other just because of your understanding of his temperament. These are things that don't come overnight. It took me some time to understand."

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: It has been wet in Perth leading up to the Test and the head curator here seemed to have rather given up on the sun making an appearance in the hours before the start of play. However, that is exactly what can be seen today in Perth. Clear, blue skies and a lovely day for some Test cricket.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: That is what the Indian Express is reporting at least. Ashwin could be seen taking a close look at the pitch yesterday. India have often gone for all-pace attacks in their last two tours of Australia and so it won't be anything new if they leave out both their premier spin-bowling all-rounders.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: 1407 runs in 14 Tests at an average of 56.28 with three centuries and eight half-centuries. Yashasvi Jaiswal has made a good start to his Test career, to put it extremely mildly. Much of that success has come in India and two Tests he played in the West Indies though. He didn't have a great time of it in South Africa, scoring just 50 runs in four innings. But then Jaiswal's purple patch really started only after that series in South Africa and so this particular tour would certainly be seen as one of the big moments of his career in the years to come, regardles of how it goes.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: The only unknown quantity in this Australian lineup for India would be their opener Nathan McSweeney. Few challenges are more difficult in Test cricket nowadays than facing a fresh Jasprit Bumrah with the new ball but that is exactly how McSweeney will be introduced to Test cricket. However, The 25-year-old is known to possess a calm head on his shoulder right since his underage days, to the point that his school PE teacher nicknamed him ‘Buddha’.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: India's last Test match at Perth was also the only one they lost in that historic 2018/19 series. Strangely enough, that was also the only Test in the series in which their captain Virat Kohli scored a century. Considering his lofty standards at the time, it was quite rare for Kohli not to score more than one century in a series. Kohli scored 123 in 257 balls, putting up partnerships of 74 with Cheteshwar Pujara, 91 with Ajinkya Rahane and 50 with Hanuma Vihari. Kohli has been pretty much a shadow of the century machine that he was in Test cricket between 2016 and 2019 but it is widely expected that he could come good in this series. A good way to start that might be to do a repeat of what he did the last time he played in Perth.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: The set of players that could be called Australia's core, loosely defined as Pat Cummins, Steve Smith, Josh Hazlewood, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Travis Head, Alex Carey and Mitchell Starc, are all above 30 in this series.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: A look at Australia's very recent record would tell you that they have suffered rather topsy-turvy fortunes in Test cricket. However, the fact remains that very few sides have been able to actually beat them in a Test series for a while now. In fact, Australia have played 16 Test series since they lost to Pakistan in the UAE in October 2018. They have lost just three of those. The problem for them though, is that all three of those losses have been against India!

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Too early for a pitch report maybe but we can remember what the curator here had to say a couple of days before Day 1. The first look of the Perth pitch showed a lot of grass on the surface. Curator Isaac McDonald said that the initial plan was to depend on the sun to bake the pitch in the days leading up to the Test. But with the overcast conditions, the ground staff may have to "manufacture" the baking process.

“I mean everyone talks about the traditional baking of the top. We can kind of manufacture that with more rolling and less water on top if we have to. We’re testing the wicket hour by hour, so it’s quite conditions-based at the moment. So at the moment we’re leaning towards rolling it a bit more on top to get that firmness and that happy medium between bat and ball. But yeah, fingers crossed the sun pops out," he said. However, McDonald also said that the ground staff were well on course to ensuring that the pitch is “rock hard” come Friday.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: The absence of Rohit Sharma is not the only hole India have to fill in their lineup. There is no Mohammad Shami either and that means that Harshit Rana could make his international debut today if India decide against using Akash Deep as their third seamer. Another newbie could be pace-bowling all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy, who has already made heads turn in international cricket with his performances in the series against Bangladesh. An injury to Shubman Gill has opened up a place in the batting order as well which could be filled up by either Dhruv Jurel or Devdutt Padikkal, both of whom impressed in the home series against England earlier this year.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: The first Test to be hosted in Perth was between Australia and (no prizes for guessing) England from December 11 to 16, 1970. Australia didn't really gain a foothold at the WACA in the initial years of Test cricket there - they won just two of the first five Test matches at the ground, with the first Test being drawn, the West Indies subjecting them to an innings defeat in 1975 and England beating them in 1978. In this century, though, only South Africa and India have been able to beat them here. India did it once in January 2008 while South Africa did it thrice in December 2008, December 2012 and November 2016.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: For the uninitiated, this match is not happening at the WACA. That old stadium stopped being a Test venue back in 2018. India were the visiting team in the first Test that the Perth Stadium, or Optus Stadium, hosted and that was in December 2018. Today, India will be the first visiting team to return to the stadium for a second Test. Australia had won that first Test by 146 runs. They have since faced New Zealand, West Indies and Pakistan here and won those Tests by 296 runs, 164 runs and 360 runs respectively.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: That is what you feel like saying whenever a Test series happens in Australia but what is unique about this one is that both captains for the first match of this five-game series at least are designated pace bowlers. This will be Pat Cummins' 28th Test as Australia captain while Jasprit Bumrah is leading India for just the second time.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: In case you haven't noticed, that is Jasprit Bumrah holding one ear of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in the pre-series pic, not Rohit Sharma. That is because Rohit is in India for the birth of his second child and will arrive in Perth only on November 24. Many people have had a lot to say about Rohit's call, but it is quite difficult to come up with a convincing argument for someone to miss the birth of their child for work, regardless of what that work is. The decent thing to do is congratulate Rohit and his newly expanded family and move on.

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Usman Khawaja, Nathan McSweeney, Marnus Labuschagne, Steven Smith, Travis Head, Mitchell Marsh, Alex Carey(w), Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins(c), Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood, Josh Inglis, Scott Boland

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Devdutt Padikkal, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant(w), Dhruv Jurel, Nitish Reddy, Ravichandran Ashwin, Akash Deep, Jasprit Bumrah(c), Mohammed Siraj, Sarfaraz Khan, Prasidh Krishna, Ravindra Jadeja, Harshit Rana, Washington Sundar, Abhimanyu Easwaran

India vs Australia LIVE Score 1st Test: Dust off those didgeroos because the Australian summer is here and so is the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Travel back to the early 2000s and tell an Indian fan that their side would go into a Test rubber in Australia with a chance of completing a hat-trick of series wins in that nation and they would've thought they are hearing the contents of a fever dream. But that is exactly what India have a chance at doing. However, chinks have fallen off their armour in ways they almost never have before. All sets us up for a fascinating first Test at the very least. Stay tuned for more updates.