Steve Smith, the grandmaster

Steve Smith spent most of the first half-hour of Australia's dramatic run-chase on a beige plastic chair in the front of his team's dressing-room. He had his pads on in addition to a training cap and a blue towel which he held closely to himself. He never moved. He never made a sound. He hardly even shifted in his seat. Except the couple of times in between overs where he seemed to be humming a song in his head. You'd have thought he was in a trance. He was after all virtually living and breathing every delivery that Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne were having to survive in the middle.

Australia's stand-in Test captain did finally allow himself a bathroom break on Friday (March 3) morning. But only once Head had taken the attack to the Indian spinners and taken Australia to the cusp of a famous win. By then Smith had already broken away from his meditative state. He had even applauded with feverish delight a couple of times when Head hit a boundary. And he'd started relaxing to such an extent that he was even seen sharing jokes with Usman Khawaja, who'd now taken the chair next to him. When the win came, with Labuschagne lofting R Ashwin over mid-wicket before letting out a guttural roar, Smith was on his feet immediately. There was no over the top celebration though. There was no over the top show of emotion. It would have been understandable if there was though. Beating India in India in a Test match after all is more than a win. It's an achievement.

Smith's expression though was more like that of a chess grandmaster whose opponent had just resigned. But the way he'd arranged his pieces had already set the result in train the previous day.

It was certainly a more frenetic Smith some 18 or so hours earlier at the Holkar Stadium in Indore who'd set it all in motion. He was anything but stationary and still. He was everywhere. If he wasn't making the latest intricate change to his field, he was in his bowler's ear trying to get them to be as precise with their plans as he was with his. He never let the game settle. He never let the Indians settle either. There were times he'd move his second slip to Matthew Kuhnemann slightly wider, or a few inches forward or a few inches to his right. There were times he'd move silly point from in front of the popping crease to the other side of it. Or the times he'd just bring in an extra fielder for one delivery just to make the batter think. The Aussie fielders did at some level start resembling pieces on Steve Smith's chessboard.

It did also help that he had two very talented young spinners and more importantly one of the best the world has ever seen in Nathan Lyon having one of the best days of his Test career with the ball. And behind every setup and every single piece of magic that Lyon dished out in Indore on Day 2, there was Smith aiding and abetting his premier spinner's genius.

 If he wasn't shutting out scoring options for India's key batters, he was forcing them to create some where there weren't. Todd Murphy and Kuhnemann had been excellent already in the series. But with a rare Test win on Indian soil on the line and Australia desperate to not let go of another rare opportunity to run the game here, they needed Smith to shepherd them. In addition to giving them the best options and openings to get rid of the Indian batters. That's what he did and they in turn couldn't have responded better.

Then came the ring field on the leg-side to Cheteshwar Pujara, his old nemesis who'd always thwarted Australia's plans of victory. Lyon had plugged away from over the wicket to try and spin one past the defences of Pujara, like he'd done in the first innings. But Pujara had, like he has so often, managed to hold his own and in fact even started scoring off Lyon, including an uncharacteristic six late in his innings. Smith's response was to throw in three fielders, all in the short radius between a short square-leg and a short mid-wicket in a 'T' formation, with Labuschagne slightly a few inches ahead of Peter Handscomb and Kuhnemann in the middle.

From the outside, the trio looked to be ganging up on Pujara. Smith also positioned himself at leg-slip, a position that hadn't been used often enough for Lyon earlier in the series, with a 7-2 leg-side field. This was Australia giving India a dose of their own design that was used so successfully on the previous tour Down Under, where they squeezed and suffocated the right-handers. Pujara had no respite. He simply could not pierce the field and eventually fell to that extraordinary catch from Smith himself at leg-slip.

Smith had spoken before Indore about wanting to slow the pace of the game down and get Australia to play the third Test at their tempo. Or at least try to. And if anything, that'll be among the most glorious features of Australia's victory here. The way they never allowed India to dictate terms, either with bat or ball. The proof being the run-rate for India in their second-innings, which never got close to three-an-over, which had a telling impact in a fast-paced game like this one.

When India did attempt to do that, like with the