For starters, this is surely the spiciest pitch rolled out here. At least data suggests so - the ball never seamed close to 0.8 degrees here before. The bowling without an ounce of doubt was top drawer. Even then do scores of 150 and 67 actually justify the conditions on offer? Or was it also down to poor quality of batting that led to the game moving this rapidly. You did see errors in judgement - batters hanging back to front foot balls or vice versa. Add to it the false shots. Is there a genuine decline in the quality of Test match batting these days compared to the bowling, which at least to the naked eye appears to have a better graph. Sure pitches do have a big say in this but why is the game struggling to see gutsy knocks?

326, 416, 598/4, 487 - these were the first innings total of all the Test matches at Perth's Optus stadium since its inception in 2018. So clearly batting hasn't been overly difficult historically here. And it's noteworthy that Australia were the first team to bat on all these occasions and won all those Tests. But you have 150 playing 67/7 in this game. What's drastically changed?

09:35 Local Time,07:05 IST - Day 2:: It's a lovely Saturday morning in Perth and we still can't wrap our heads around the fact that the game has already seen 17 wickets for just 217 runs. But hang on..

The way things are going, this Test isn't going to last very long. You don't want to miss any of it. See you tomorrow for more. Until then, it's goodbye!

There have been only 94 days of play where the ball seamed on average more than the 0.793 degrees on view today for the seamers, but only one of those days had a lower batting average than 10.64 by both India & Australia combined (181 runs for 17 wickets) - the second day of Brisbane Test bw Australia & South Africa in 2022 which saw an average deviation of 0.810 degrees and batters averaged 9.16 (18 wickets for 165 runs). Conditions have been difficult to bat, but batting has been poor.

17:54 Local Time, 09:54 GMT, 15:24 IST: Record breaking first day here in Perth. As many as 17 wickets fell, which is the most number of wickets on the first day in Australia since 1952.

Bumrah to Mitchell Starc, no run, brilliant slower off-cutter to finish the day.

kartik: this BGT is all about bowlers vs bowlers, whichever bowling squad exceeds in this series will take the title

Bumrah to Mitchell Starc, no run, good length on middle, 136.8kph, Starc defends from the crease to mid-on

Prosenjit: @Pritam Umesh is of raw pace...Harshit is much slower compared to him

Bumrah to Mitchell Starc, no run

Bumrah to Mitchell Starc, FOUR, right off the middle of the bat! Full ball on off, Starc stays rooted to the crease and simply drives through the line of it. Crunches it over mid-off

Bumrah to Mitchell Starc, no run, 136.6kph, full delivery on off, pushed to mid-off

Should be the final over of the day

Bumrah to Carey, 1 run, back of a length on off, nips in a touch as Carey looks to defend from the crease. He gets a thick inside edge behind square

Harshit Rana to Mitchell Starc, no run, good length on off,

Harry: @Pritam - i felt exactly the same about Harshit Rana this morning. especially the long arm bands he is wearing on both arms and the body build.

Harshit Rana to Mitchell Starc, no run, short of length outside off, left alone

Harshit Rana to Mitchell Starc, no run

Harshit Rana to Mitchell Starc, 2 runs, good length on off, 132.3kph,