India vs England 1st Test Cricket Highlights Day 2 At Chennai
Part 1
Part 2
Scoreline at end of Day’s play: England 316 all out. India 155/6
The highlights here start with the wickets from Day 1 – a sort of make-up for the highlights unavailability yesterday.
A brilliant day of cricket especially the last two sessions. Andrew Flintoff who was not out overnight plodded around for a disappointing 18 (75). Eventually, England waded their way to 316 through a 53 by Matt Prior and Anderson’s doggedness: 19 (82).
By the end of it all, most of us fresh from the win over Australia were shaking our heads about scoring rates and there was a general air of expectancy in anticipation of the Indian batting. Flintoff, Harmison and Anderson meanwhile nodded their heads as they produced brilliant spells to have India tottering at 37/3. When Sehwag is unable to get his cut shots going, you know the bowling is good. He eventually got out trying to cut one – having hit the previous ball straight down for four, it appeared like he was preempting Anderson’s next move, who instead bowled exactly the same ball. Most of the havoc was caused in the last over before tea bowled by debutant Graeme Swann. Two LBWs (Gambhir and Dravid) to become only the second player in history to take two wickets in his first over in test cricket. Dravid’s wicket was iffy, but out of form is often = out of luck. Rahul dropped another catch today and though he took a tougher one later on, one just gets that unfortunate nagging feeling that he has only 3 more innings left to get a big one in, despite the fact that no sure replacement comes to mind immediately.
Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman pulled out some stunning shots to take India close to 100. In fact, Sachin whacked the first ball he faced after tea from Swann for a six in similar fashion to his shots against Brad Hogg in the last tour of Australia. Both were out caught and bowled after a change-of-ball break. Flintoff who got Sachin out first ball in his evening spell, bowled beautifully and gave Yuvraj several shaky moments before he eventually was snared by Harmison who animatedly acknowledged Flintoff’s role in the wicket. Flintoff had got under Yuvraj Singh’s skin in the 3rd ODI – surprising, cos in the past getting stared at or sledged only made Yuvraj play better.
Harbhajan Singh (who played a couple of spectacular drives) and Dhoni will walk out tomorrow morning.
Couple of things today – to see Harmison showing signs of getting somewhere near his best was personally gratifying and I only noticed today that Gambhir enters the cricket field with an exaggerated right-foot-first thing.
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