Siddle puts Australia in charge

Even as Virat Kohli shone for India with his maiden Test ton on day three at the Adelaide Oval, it was Peter Siddle who had the most impact on the match. He bowled with fire to complete his fifth five-wicket haul in Tests, and all but sealed the match for Australia.

He finished with 5 for 49, as Australia ended up with a first-innings lead of 382. Importantly, he got the pair of Gautam Gambhir and Sachin Tendulkar after they had seemingly settled in. Gambhir and Tendulkar survived the initial morning period and took their partnership to 47 before the introduction of Siddle. He has been Michael Clarke's go-to man in the series, often striking early in a spell, and he did not disappoint here either.

He drew an edge from Tendulkar and the ball flew low to second slip, where Ponting bagged it. Then, he extracted extra bounce to trouble Gambhir, who fended a well-directed short ball that flew high into the off side and was snapped by Michael Hussey.

It was a fine spell from Siddle, who entered the match with only one Test wicket for 241 runs at the Adelaide Oval. This five-for took him to 22 wickets in the series, only the second time he has taken 20 or more wickets in a series after the Ashes series in 2009.

At one point during the day, he was on a hat-trick when he had R Ashwin lbw for 5 and then Zaheer Khan nicking behind for a golden duck. Ishant Sharma, though, survived the hat-trick ball.