My Bloglogue March 25th 2005

Pakistan made lots of runs, thanks to Gangully for making poor decisions for India. Just like the first day, Balaji got Inzi on the very first ball he bowled on the second day. It was a well directed in-swinging delivery that trapped the Pakistani captain right in the front. Balaji gave some hope for the Indian, they were pumped up.

But all this energy were put to rest, Gangully makes a poor choice in getting Balaji out from the attack. Why? I am trying to find a good reason for this action by Gangully. Balaji was going great guns and he was the only bowler who had some venom in the attack. Gangully decided to continue with Kumble and Irfan. Irfan was totally disappointing and could do nothing to get a break through. Kumble failed to cook his lentils in his home ground. May be like most teams, Pakistanis might have a game plan in place to deal Kumble. However Kumble is hard to play on day 4 and 5. He might come back again and again and again.

Anyone been through a situation like this; assume Chris Tavera and Ravi Sastri both batting on 90s, and are fighting to draw the game. How would they play? The session between lunch and Tea, Pakistanis played most boring cricket that you could watch. May be Younis wanted to score a triple. But that should not bring the run rate to 1.8 and much lower. These 2 sessions provided me the valium I need to sleep, automatically along with the stadium crowd I fell asleep. This disturbed sleep continued until the newly named “Basavaapa street” aka Pitch at Chinaswamy stadium, started to work for Harbajan.

The off spinner started to get wickets at regular intervals. Whew!, where did this juice come from? [Thanks Ravi Sastri], Few Other Ravi’s commentating Jargons - milking singles, commanding position, good conversation rate.

Finally Pakistan were all out for a mammoth total of 570, with Vice captain Younis Khan scoring a record high score of 267. Harbajan also ended 6/153. Along with Harbajan, Kumble [0/159], Irfan [1/105] and Balaji [2/114] scored centuries.
Indians came to bat, The Sehwag motor company started to pump runs for India right from the word go. Abul Razzak suffered the most; Sehwag hit 5 fluent boundaries and a huge six of Kanneria over long on/off area. At close India was 55/0. Tomorrow is new day; I would watch out for this off spinner Arshad Khan. He seems really tight and good. India has to score about 450 in order to put some sort of fight in the game.

Most offices seemed closed today. Today is “Panguni utram” and of course Good Friday.