England In India - October 2011/12

[ZoraxDoom]

Oh. Big wicket! But that does not look out to the naked eye.

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Nope, take that back. Out. Great decision. Zak

 

[SaiSrini]

Big big wicket! Cook is a more important wicket and glad we got him out soon.

 

[shravi]

Two biggest wickets- Cook & Trott. One down, one to go.

 

[SaiSrini]

Harsha is annoying. Trying to provoke his fellow commentators. Ganguly gave him a curt reply when Harsha was trying to ping Ganguly about his opinion on coaches and their influence on the performance of the team.

 

[ZoraxDoom]

Yea, I thought that wasn't nice of Harsha. Dada delt with it well.

Ishant starts short and wide.

Nice to see PK still swinging it, he deserves a wicket. Bowling very well.

 

[SaiSrini]

Praveen has so far vindicated his selection ahead of Sree even though he is not yet among the wickets. I am pretty confident we wouldn't have seen this kind of performance from Sree had he been picked.

 

[ZoraxDoom]

PK's not using his inswinger enough IMO. He keeps moving the ball away from both batsmen, but isn't moving it back in enough. The few times he has he's been a bit too straight.

 

[WubbaLubbaDubDub]

Dravid dropping Trott
Strauss saved from Run Out

2 lives to 2 good dangerous batsman. Bhajji started well

 

[ZoraxDoom]

Harsh to call that a drop. Half chance. Difficult to take.

 

[SaiSrini]

With 1 over to go before lunch, I would say that was England's session. It was important not to lose too many wickets and England have achieved that by losing just one (though that was a big one).

 

[ZoraxDoom]

And that's lunch.

England's session. PK bowling beautifully, but without reward. He tested England's patience and they passed with flying colours, he could have been more attacking. Zak started off slow but found his rhythm and got Cook with a typical Zak-style dismissal. Ishant had 2 ordinary overs and 1 good one, Bhajji's ripping it and flighting it, but not much in the pitch for him. With some luck he could have had a wicket first ball. Testing, probing bowling, but Strauss, Cook and Trott persevered. Pitch is going to flatten out, the ball's going to get older, it only gets easier from here on for them.

It'll be interesting to see if PK can still extract some swing and if Zak can get some reverse. Bhajji and Ishant need to step up now, they'll be needed to provide breakthroughs with the older ball. It'll be interesting to see how and when MSD uses Raina too.

 

[SaiSrini]

I can see England scoring 450 odd from here.

 

[teamindia]

These guys on SKY hate IPL a lot

Someone needs to tell Holding that Gayle problem started before IPL started.

Edit: India bashing about to start on Sky.

 

[lewissaffin]

I think the Sky commentators are well within their rights to "bash" the BCCI and the select few Indian batsmen who don't like getting out so much that they feel it necessary to jeopardise the well-being of the game for their own sake.

As for the morning's play, it has been intriguing. Praveen Kumar has looked rather impressive to the first-time viewer (i.e. me) and Zaheer Khan had Alastair Cook struggling to get in line which ultimately led to his demise. Harbhajan Singh looks dangerous too but Ishant Sharma bowled some filth.

India have looked marginally on top, I'd say, but no more than can be expected in these conditions. These are the perfect Test Match conditions, in my opinion.

 

[cricket_icon]

No they don't?

And I think Sachin's batting at his regular spot.

I'm itching to see PK up against Cook. Should be good.

ooops I meant Broad. Yeah, most likely will bat at 4 but I saw the team sheet on cricinfo, said 3 for some reason.

Completely agree with what Holding said during lunch, have a two tier system, although I don't believe there should be 12 Test teams.