Former Australian opening batter Matthew Hayden slammed Australia for not declaring on the second day of the third Test match against India at the Gabba, Brisbane. The home team could have declared at the fag end of the second day’s play but Pat Cummins decided not to call off his players despite rain prediction for the rest of the match.

Many cricket boffins including Mark Nicholas believed that Australia could have declared at 370 and had a 10-15 over blast against the Indian openers. Australia was bundled out after managing 445 on the third day’s morning.

Matthew Hayden said on Channel 7, “I sense that playing with the weather is like playing with fire. You’ve just got to focus on winning the Test match from an Australian point of view. India may be focusing at this point now on just trying to hold in this Test match. It begs the question, what would India want? I sense that this is maybe playing into their hands considering there is going to be some weather over the next few days.”

Hayden called the Australian team’s approach as conservative as they decided to keep playing on the second day.

“Less likely for Australia to get the ball and take 20 wickets, the better for them. But I’m not surprised, this side over the years has been relatively conservative and it has perhaps stung from the days of Steve Waugh where it just seemed like the follow-on was something you naturally didn’t take,” Hayden added.

Earlier, on the second day, Travis Head and Steve Smith scored 152 and 101 runs respectively. The duo added 241 runs for the fourth wicket after joining forces at 75-3. 

Meanwhile, India is struggling at 48-4 after losing Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, and Rishabh Pant cheaply.