MOHALI: Thank Michael Clarke if you’re Indian. Fall at his feet if you’re Shikhar Dhawan. On Saturday, the Aussie captain allowed the Delhi opener to have a belligerent, record-breaking maiden Test by choosing not to appeal when Mitchell Starc had inadvertently ‘Mankaded’ him on the first ball of the innings.

Dhawan went on to smash an unbeaten 185 in just 168balls, the fastest hundred ever on debut and the highest score by an Indian debutant, and was 15 away at close from scoring the country's first double-hundred in a maiden Test. The blitz kept alive India's hopes of enforcing a result in the rain-curtailed third Test.