Game Day, Third Test, 2nd day

Indians and the Aussies, Nagpur

“In a test Match, the 1st hour belongs to the bowler, if you survive it, the next 5 hrs is yours.”

The above are golden words from the legend Sunil Manohar Gavasker, heard by another great batsman Dean Jones, who happen to mention it 12.5 times during his commentary.

I heard [the first time and ignored the rest.] it yesterday The point is, it was a great piece of advice, being the batting consultant and for the money he is getting paid, Sunny Gavasker has to do something or other right! , and team India for its respect to sunny, tried to follow those golden words but failed right royally. Why? In the above golden words, you would see something big is missing, a four letter word. “R U N S”

Agreed, as per the doctrine, the primary goal is to see off the 1st hour without losing your wicket, then stay the next 5 hours, but during this stay, the dam batsmen have to score RUNS.

Sunny did not mention it anywhere, our guys followed it blindly and did not trouble themselves to score runs. A batting goal to stay there for long period of time without scoring runs. Indians started to dig a stinking pond around them and trapped themselves in at the end of the day. At close of play, India were 146 /5 in 77 overs, a Run rate of “1.90”, even Ravi “kata podum” Shastri would feel ashamed. He would definitely feel he would have done better with his bat.

Indians innings started with real power, 5 fours from Sehwag within 12 balls India was 20 for no loss. Aussies however removed Sehwag out, Adam Gill Christ took a great catch to see him off, [compare this with our Butter Boy “Patel” who dropped vital catches and let the Aussies loose to score above 300.]

Dravid walks in, have you ever been to a slow cycling race? I have not but yesterday iu saw one. Dravid and Chopra started a great slow cycling competition and did not trouble the bowlers and the scores. They started to play for a draw in the 1sr hour for the 2nd day of a test. They followed blindly the “Gavasker” doctrine. Chopra never pushed for runs. However major contributor in this sloth bear innings was the acting captain Rahul Dravid. This time, the wall was really a stationary dry wall.

Dravid made 21 in about 140 balls, [about 24 overs.] Even 2 runs per over would have got him a half century, but a sloth is a sloth. Dravid and Chopra started to dig this dirty deep stinking pond, Chopra’s [and our] agony ended, he was out finally.

Sachin walks in, and has no other choice other than to continue digging the pond further deep. Finally was given a LBW, every other batsman in the world would have got the benefit of the doubt. But he was out. Dean Jones was screaming that it was poor decision, while Sanjay Manju started to swear it was a Fair “Dejition” , people!, it is high time to give Dean Jones the Indian citizenship card [that is to be forfeited from Sanjay Manju in a day or two]

Laxman walked in with his bow and arrow, did nothing, and was out as expected. Kaif and Dravid tried something very hard, over all it was uninteresting and lack luster cricket, imagine watching this dry wall at 3.00am, I gave up and dozed off for some time. But woke up to see Dravid was out, that too after wasting ½ one day international.

That’s it, Patel and Kaif started to play, sleeping seemed a better choice. Hope they set things right to save some pride. Even if Patel scores, he is all set to be dropped for the Bombay test.

Here is the comment of the day.

Deano: It is time for Gangully to try our every other player in the team for toss, find the lucky one and send him for toss every time. He has lost 6 times now.

Barry Richards: good idea, but make it everyone except Patel, because he would not be able to hold or catch the coin.

Let us keeping hoping India would improve.