 24 January 2008
In pursuit of win at the Adelaide test match the Indian management decided to drop out of form openor Wasim Jaffer and bring Harbhajan Singh in his place. This means that India would be going into the test match with 5 specialist bowlers and the batsmen will be under pressure to post big scores because they will be one batsmen short and Mahender Singh Dhoni has not looked in good form.
India won the toss and elected to bat first in the test match hoping to post big total in first innings and use the two spinners in last innings to force a result. Irfan Pathan opening for the first time on the trip got a good bowl from Mitchell Jhonson and he edged the bowl to Gilchrist. On the other end Sehwag looked solid and was scoring quickly to take pressure of scoring of Rahul Dravid. But Dravid failed to capitalaize on the good luck he had when he was given not out LBW by umpire Asad Rauf and was caught by Ponting off Jhonson again in the series.
After lunch India lost Sehwag quickly to a sharp delivery which he edged to first slip to be lapped up in safe hands of Mathew Hayden. After playing some crisp shots Saurav Ganguly was out LBW to Brad Hogg and India were in trouble at that stage. But Tendulkar and Laxman took India to tea without any damage and both players looked comfortable and not troubled at all. After tea Tendulkar played some attacking cricket shots against the spinner Brad Hogg and took the attack to Australian bowling. Laxman was giving him good company from other end. Sachin reached his century in just 2 shots by hitting a six and off drive to go from 92 to 100 and complete his 39th century. India lost Laxman once again not playing shot against short ball of Bret Lee in similar way he got out in Melbourbne test match. Dhoni was giving Tendulkar company and they ended the day at 309/5 with Tendulkar batting on 124 and Dhoni not out on 6 from 54 deliveries. India should be aiming to reach a score near 450 to be competitive in the match and with 5 bowlers look to exploit the conditions which they are familiar with. |
