When he passed 50 in this innings, Sanjay Manjrekar asked Sunil Gavaskar on commentary if Pujara had done enough to regain his place in the team or whether he needed to clinch it with a hundred. Gavaskar's elaborately considered opinion was that in the current set-up, Pujara needed a 150 to be in serious contention. A century and a half? What team of titans was this? And what bastion of Bradmans was Pujara trying to breach?
Meanwhile Rohit has had a free run in the middle order. He was played at No. 3 (Pujara's preferred place, where he has played nearly all his Test cricket) till the first Test in Galle, and when he failed there, Rahane was kicked upstairs so that Rohit could find a more sheltered billet at No. 5. When Pujara was grinding through his massive innings at the SSC in Colombo, the commentary team, made up of Manjrekar, Gavaskar and Aakash Chopra, came to the curious conclusion that Rohit was tailor-made for the No. 5 spot because he could "express" himself and play with the tail. Suddenly it was as if Rohit had some natural lien on the lower berth, while Pujara would have to duke it out for a top-order place with the likes of Rahul and Rahane, or even one of the settled openers
I think what Ishant was telling Prasad is that his short pitch stuff is not scary, he should try and hit him on the helmet.
Ishant has gone mental, I like it !!
Edit- I have a feeling I will smash my TV today, thanks to Manjerekar.
Agree with everything, but obviously I was only being very tongue in cheek in my original post.The grass is always greener on the other side. However, we have found a lot more quick bowlers in the last decade than in the past 50 years of our cricket history. Munaf, Sreesanth, RP, Irfan all had good starts to their career and were bowling early 140s for a while before fading away. Similarly, Zaheer was phenomenal for a long time and was actually the reason we got to that No.1 position in tests along with the Fab 4. In Yadav, Aaron and Shami we have 3 bowlers who can bowl quick and should be persisted with. Ishit is slowly showing progress. Add Bhuvi to the list the quick/seam-bowling stocks are not as bad as our spin bowling stocks where we have had to go back to Harby and Mishra.