India held on to the Border-Gavaskar Trophy after Australia threw away a handy overnight lead of 62 with only one wicket down, the tourists collapsing completely on the third morning.

Australia would have started the third day of the Delhi Test high in confidence at 1-61 and holding a significant 62 run lead with India to bat last on a tricky wicket. An hour and a half later any hope of a series win was virtually over as, once again, the visitors had no answer to the spin onslaught of Ravis Ashwin and Jadeja.

It’s hard to say whether Australia were swept aside or swept themselves aside as six of the wickets were the result of misjudging either a sweep or a reverse sweep.

Ashwin made the initial breakthroughs before Jadeja took six of the last seven wickets as the pair shared all ten between them. Jadeja again earned the Player of the Match award as he finished with his best Test innings figures of 7-42 and he’s also never bettered his 10-110 for the match.

After defending the first two deliveries of the morning, Travis Head latched on to the third from Ravi Ashwin and sent it sailing through cover. Three balls later and Ashwin bowled a similar line but dropped the ball slightly shorter. Head was drawn forward again but the ball turned and brushed the outside edge for a simple caught behind. He’d managed to score 43 which proved to be the highest score of the innings and one of only two individual scores in double figures.

In his pre-match press conference Pat Cummins had spoken about how Australia’s batters must find their own way to play in the conditions. He highlighted how Steve Smith, Australia’s most successful batter on the sub-continent, rarely uses the sweep shot. The final ball of the nineteenth over perhaps showed why. Uncharacteristically he tried to play it against Ashwin but completely misjudged the trajectory with the ball going under his bat and striking him on the back pad to see him dismissed lbw for 9.

Marnus Labuschagne had made 35 when he fell to what the locals consider to be a typical Delhi delivery. He stayed back to a slightly shorter ball from Jadeja but the ball stayed low after pitching and he was bowled as it went under his bat after clipping the toe end.

The score was 4-95 and the wicket marked the start of the carnage that decimated the innings, the next three wickets falling in as many balls without any addition to the score.

Matt Renshaw had come in as a concussion substitute for David Warner and he managed to negotiate the first five deliveries of Ashwin’s next over. At that point, wicket-keeper Srikar Bharat went all the way down the wicket and spoke to Ashwin. Whatever was said, next ball Renshaw became the third batter to fall to the sweep, lbw for 2 as, again, the ball sneaked under the bat.

It was the last ball of Ashwin’s over and, at the start of the next, Jadeja produced a beauty to find the edge of Peter Handscomb’s bat before he’d scored and the chance was held by Virat Kohli at slip.

At that point Pat Cummins’ mind may well have been muddled by what he was seeing and he’d probably had to rush to change into his batting gear the way the wickets had been falling in quick succession. No matter, he didn’t help his team’s cause by trying to slog-sweep the first ball he faced over cow corner only to be comprehensively bowled leaving his team at 7-95.

Nathan Lyon survived the hat-trick ball and, batting with Alex Carey, returned some stability to the innings. With the way the pitch had been playing it looked as though even a lead of around 150 could provide a tricky chase.

Carey is renowned for using sweep shots and is as capable as any in Australia’s line-up at using it as a prime scoring shot. However, in both innings in the first Test he got out to the reverse sweep and it was no surprise when he succumbed again to the shot, when he was bowled by Jadeja for 7.

The eighth wicket pair had only put on 15 but it was the one partnership above 10 for any of the last seven wickets.

One more sweep by Lyon and a reverse sweep by Matt Kuhnemann brought the innings to a close as Jadeja bowled them both. The innings had crumpled in 91 minutes on the third morning for 113 setting India 115 runs to win to give them an unassailable two-nil lead in the four Test series.

They lost 4 wickets during the chase but were always in control thanks to Rohit Sharma’s 31 and Cheteshwar Pujara finishing unbeaten on the same score in his one hundredth Test.

A highlight for Australia came when Carey produced his first stumping in his seventeen Tests when Kohli, on 20, was drawn out of his crease by Todd Murphy. It was a deserved reward as Carey’s keeping has been excellent in both of the first two Tests.

It was fitting that Pujara, having failed to score in the first innings of his milestone Test, was able to score the winning runs to secure India’s six wicket victory, ensuring that they keep their hands on the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.