91st over: Australia 292-5 (Green 37, Paine 41) An entire bay’s worth of Star Wars stormtroopers have just arrived to sit beneath the press box, so we’ll look forward to seeing whether they veer towards obnoxiousness or jolliness later in the day. They’ve also got a C3P0 and a Yoda, who I must saw is looking a lot broader across the shoulders than the original. Sympathy for the bay attendant who is trying to seat them all in their allocated virus-era seats. Siraj bowls a testing over to Paine, keeping it out beyond his off stump, aside from an inside edge which sneaks past his timbers instead. No run. 90th over: Australia 292-5 (Green 37, Paine 41) Huge swing from Natarajan to start his over, but the rest of his delivery is all over the place. One, he’s overstepped to deliver a no-ball. Two, he’s started it wide outside off, so with the away swing it ends up going to first slip. Three, Pant hurts his finger diving across to avoid more byes. If I didn’t mention it already, Navdeep Saini had a muscle strain yesterday and won’t bowl, so India’s attack is Natarajan, Thakur, Siraj, with Washington Sundar for spin. 89th over: Australia 290-5 (Green 37, Paine 40) Siraj with the missile from the other, and he tries a couple of bouncers in between pitching up. One of those short balls goes soaring off the surface and clears Pant behind the stumps by a large margin, flying away for four byes. A few singles in between times and Australia have enjoyed a lucrative start. 88th over: Australia 282-5 (Green 36, Paine 38) Quite the opening over! Newish ball being taken by Natarajan, up against Green. Natarajan beats the bat a couple of times, once striking the pad, once dipping away from the outside edge by a sliver of daylight. In between times, Green dismisses him twice to the boundary straight down the ground, back past the bowler. We’re certainly underway. Emails ahoy. “Oh the joy of both waking up to and going to bed to Test match cricket. It may be the winter cricket giddiness, but forgive me this premature comment: Could Cameron Green turn out to be the solution to Australia’s post-Paine skipper conundrum? If he were to continue to play himself into being a middle-order fixture and Paine persists for another two years, Green could be - in both temperament and skill - the ideal man to take the reins, despite his relative youth. Labuschagne is obviously the premier batsman not named Warner or Smith, but there’s something about his presence that, without being harsh, does not seem to lend itself to captaincy.” You would find a number of people who would agree with you on the latter point, David Reynolds. As for the former, I think we should give the young man time to make enough runs to feel established as a Test batsman before considering higher honours. From my perspective, Pat Cummins is an excellent captaincy candidate once Paine finishes up, and would break the orthodoxy of Australia only ever giving the job to the best batsman rather than the best likely captain. If you’d like a little more detail on the day’s play, and you’d also like to meet the very cute baby of my OBO colleague Adam Collins, here we are with Winnie Mae going through our daily wrap (while wearing a wrap). Here is the wires report on yesterday’s play, for the basics. Get in touch Had a lot of good correspondence yesterday: people back at work and having a sneaky read, people still on holiday and enjoying that, people late at night on the other side of the world. Fire me off an email or a tweet via the contact details in the sidebar. Good morning from sunny Brisbane. Sunny for now – there is some Bureau chatter about a thunderstorm late in the afternoon, but if that does happen they tend to blow through fairly quickly in this part of the world, so it doesn’t fill the cricket enthusiast with dread in the way that rain might in other parts of the world. The second day of the deciding Border-Gavaskar Trophy match is here. A lot on the line: the series result, the trophy destination, the respective teams’ ICC rankings and World Test Championship qualifications. Almost too much is on the line. Scale it back, you lot! The day will start at an even position. Australia 274 for 5, with Tim Paine and Cameron Green to resume. India fielded what the ABC statto Ric Finlay ruled was the least experienced bowling attack (in terms of wickets taken) since England in 1880. Five bowlers with four Tests and 11 wickets between them. That goes up to 13 wickets if you count Rohit Sharma’s part-time spin. So they did well to have Australia 13 for 2 with Warner and Harris gone, and then 87 for 3 with Smith gone, but then things got away. If wickets fall early today, Australia might be in some strife, so there’s a lot riding on this partnership of the captain after a hectic few days and the young all-rounder making his way. Should be fun. It always is.