New Zealand bowled to Virender Sehwag the reputation, not Sehwag the batsman, and paid the price during the first session of the second day of the deciding Test. Chris Martin hit him on the finger with a short ball first up, but Sehwag enjoyed their plan of bowling short on a sluggish surface, pulling and upper-cutting with ease. When New Zealand did manage to get him to fend uppishly, there was neither short leg nor leg gully.
Martin, who took a quick five-for in Ahmedabad with traditional swing bowling, hardly pitched anything up to Sehwag. That hit on the fingers only encouraged him to keep bowling short. In Martin's second over, Sehwag pulled him for boundaries twice in front of long leg. It didn't help that when Martin pitched up later he was driven square for four.
By now Sehwag was confident enough to upper-cut Martin, who did come back well by bowling three accurate short deliveries into the rib-chest area, drawing a nod from Sehwag. The next delivery was even better, and went in the air towards the vacant leg gully.
The pitch was so slow that Sehwag once swayed out of the line of a short delivery, and then nonchalantly, as an afterthought, sliced it over gully. And again he was waiting to tuck into the full ones, whipping the next length ball off the pads.
At the other end Gautam Gambhir, who did the dirty work in Hyderabad by scratching through for his first fifty in 10 months, looked confident. His clips off the pads went where he wanted them to, the walk down the pitch to counter swing was back, and so was the steer to third man. One such shot brought up their 28th 50-run stand - off 50 balls. Gambhir had a minor scare when he came down the track and hit Daniel Vettori straight into forward shot leg, but Jesse Ryder couldn't hold on to what would have a been an exceptional catch.
Gambhir was getting the singles that brought Sehwag on strike. It wouldn't have been a good idea to keep Sehwag away from the strike. He welcomed Vettori with a six over long-on - a mere flick that went the distance - and then late-cut him for four delightfully. The second time he tried the late-cut, Brendon McCullum anticipated wonderfully at slip, but couldn't quite make the improbable catch.
Although still ginger, McCullum was moving better than he did yesterday. That made his wicket important when the day's play started. Ishant Sharma, though, wasted little time in getting McCullum out. He hit good rhythm right away, getting good bounce from lengths not quite short. One thick edge flew past gully, but the delivery immediately after was closer to the body and took the edge through to the keeper. He had New Zealand down to 165 for 9, but some lusty hitting from Tim Southee kept India in the field longer. Southee scored 25 out of the 28-run stand with Chris Martin, but the dominant feeling was that 193 was not going to be enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment