Flat out bowlers rue short break

As Australia's foot-sore fast bowlers immersed themselves in the numbing cold of a rehabilitative ice bath for the third consecutive evening, they could be excused for wishing similar discomfort on their batting teammates.

Having toiled for the first two days of the third Domain Test, in temperatures that peaked above 35C on Thursday afternoon, to dislodge India's obdurate batters, the five-man bowling group had envisaged a day of rest.

The notion that their team began day three with all 10 wickets intact, on a pitch where India had surrendered just seven scalps across almost 170 overs, gave the exhausted quintet cause to think they would not be required until at least the weekend.

And then, possibly in the guise as tailender batters, deployed to put the final flourish to a hefty total that threatened, possibly even eclipsed, India's daunting but not indomitable 7(dec)-443.

Yet, it was shortly after lunch and barely two hours into the day before Pat Cummins – the first of the specialist bowlers to be listed in Australia's batting order – dragged himself back to the middle to try and accomplish a job beyond the specialists.

With the scoreboard flashing a horror tale of 6-102, and the prospect of having to bowl again later in the stifling afternoon already looming uncomfortably large.

"This morning we turned up, and we were all hoping we'd have our feet up," Cummins said tonight on behalf of the bowling cartel, while also aiming to minimise the blame on Australia's comparatively inexperienced top-order.

"(We hoped) to have a big dent into that first innings score and be on our way to being right in the game, or even taking the result away from them (India).

"But it's still a young batting group.

"You see them training for hours and hours, trying to get better and 'Alfie' (Justin Langer), our coach, talks about batting non-stop to them.

"So they're all trying their best.

"It's just one of those things that today it didn't come off, and it's obviously not ideal."

Not ideal is something of an understatement given the revelations of the workloads imposed upon Cummins and his colleagues across the first two days, before the MCG pitch magically transformed from moribund to minefield.

Data collected by the men's team strength and conditioning coach Aaron Kellett, and onpassed to broadcasters 7 Cricket, showed the huge distances and energy expelled by bowlers during India's epic first innings.

Which sees the tourists in the driver's seat to win the third Test, given their current lead of 346 runs with five second innings wickets in hand, and thereby take an iron grip on their historic first Test series win on Australian turf.

The information captured by small, radio-controlled GPS tracking devices that players carry in their shirts showed that Cummins (38.3km), Mitchell Starc (31.2km) and Nathan Lyon (36.8km) all completed the best part of a standard marathon running in the field.

Even all-rounder Mitchell Marsh, who sent down a Test-career high 26 overs in Australia's bowling stint, clocked up 36.6km despite being essentially the 'extra' bowler (data for the other quick, Josh Hazlewood, was not broadcast).

But perhaps the most telling statistics, and the information most likely to have the bowling group hot under their collective collars as the batters folded like deck chairs on the St Kilda foreshore, was the time and distance they covered at sprint pace.

For Cummins, that number was 8.2km over two days, followed by Starc (7.2km) and Marsh (6.2km), all of whom had been literally operating flat out in the heat, only to find themselves needing to repeat those efforts after less than a day's recuperation.

Cummins conceded the frustration for the bowlers, as they watched the wickets tumble and kitted themselves out for their turns at bat, was the fresh memories of how India pair Cheteshwar Pujara (106) and Virat Kohli (82) had survived and prospered on the self-same wicket.

While holding out brave hope that their Australia contemporaries who were unable to match those deeds in the first innings might find a way of doing so in the imminent second, as the host nation seeks an already unprecedented run chase to steal victory.

"What we saw from India's first innings was Pujara and Virat, when they got going, it was just their temperament," Cummins said after play tonight.

"They just paced their innings pretty much the whole way through, and just absorbed the pressure so well.

"On this wicket, it's hard to score runs, you've got to face a lot of balls to get your big scores and it's probably one of those wickets where, if you did the hard work early, you got to cash in.

"But to cash in you've just got to keep absorbing as much pressure, and we probably didn't do that today.

"The good thing is the wicket still feels like it's pretty good.

"And everyone feels like they've faced a few balls, so hopefully after the second innings they can feel like they've faced even more."