by the closest things to god(apart from GOD himself:)......
In direct contrast to Harish,I was delighted when I found out that Tunga
had put us i.Always thought that batting first was the only way we were
goin to do it today.Anyways,Ramesh started off well enough with a clip
off his pads but was immediately castled by what for me was the delivery
of the day.The ball pitched off and middle,straightened just a lil bit to
beat Ramesh and clipped the off-stump.Quite beautiful,really.
Out came Dravid and I must say Vaas had him in a spot of a bother in his
second over.I thought Vaas had a pretty decent shout for lb against
dravid(backpad,in line,not fully forward) but it wasnt given and the
rest,as they say,is history:).Dravid really opened out in Wickremasinghe's
openin over(IIRC) with a coupla delightful shots on the on-side.Ganguly
was lookin a shade outta touch at the other end and even his otherwise
fluent off-side play suffered.Anyways I think it helped Ganguly that
Dravid was scorin so quickly at the other end.He could afford to play a
few dot balls without really feelin the pressure of havin to get a move
on.And after 10 overs or so,Ganguly started strokin the ball on the
off-side like he normally does and the Indians had cashed in on some
ordinary sl bowlin in the first 15 overs(as it would turn out,it was a
pretty ordinary effort right the way thro').
I also thought we saw some pretty ordinary captaincy from Ranatunga
today.Vaas was bowlin pretty bowlin pretty well until Dravid collared him
for 3 boundaries in his 5th over and Ranatunga responded by takin him
off.I would've thought that he would've kept him goin for a coupla overs
more cos he looked like the only sl bowler in the first 15 who looked in
any danger of pickin up a wkt:).and what was even more surprising was the
fact that in the face of the blitz by dravid and gangs,Tunga didnt turn to
murali,esp. with the lefthander battin.IMO,even with the fieldin
restrictions on,gangs wouldn't have dared go over the top,not at that
stage anyway.
Murali then came on and stemmed the tide with a pretty tight spell of
bowlin(7 for 21) and IMO,that was partly cos Dravid and Gangs didnt use
their feet often enough(esp gangs who preferred to rock back on to his
backfoot and tried to thump the ball past cover thereby bringin out the
best from mahanama who was statione there).Gangs made up for it though
with some savage hitting after he had gotten to his hundred.Really felt
sorry for murali who went for 38 runs off his last 13 balls!
I thought it'd be pretty interestin to see how the Ind went after over
no.30 esp after the way they messed it up against sa and i must say I was
pleasantly surprised to see(atleast Rahul anyways) go for the big shot
even at that stage.Did they have explicit instructions from the dressing
room to get on with it or did it come abt from the security
that could have been derived from the fact that sachin was yet to bat?
And I disagree with Harish that Rahul slowed down
towards his hundred(IMO,gangs certainly did and u only had to take one
look at his reaction on gettin there to realise how much a wc 100 meant to
him,more so maybe than a few extra runs for the side:(). anyways,after
gangs got to his hundred there was nothin much really:).different
bowlers,same result.
didnt see much of the sl innings(combo of night-out and a session of
screamin at the top of my voice provin too much,i guess:).
Ragu[gingan and rahul are the closest things to god:)]