In spite of a good bowling show on the second day of first Test by restricting England to a modest total of 316, Indian batsmen shuffled in the start of their first innings and ended up scoring 155 at the cost of six wickets.
England’s debutant off-spinner Graeme Swann was the highlight of the day claiming two wickets in his very first over of Test career. He picked up the likes of Gautam Gambhir (19) and Rahul Dravid (3). This was certainly a great Test debut that one could have strived for a long.
The 29-year-old Swann claimed those wickets with perfect deliveries as Indian batsmen seemed a bit relax against the spinners. He was earlier selected for the English squad in 1999 but couldn’t make it to the playing eleven before making this dream comeback.
However, it was paceman James Anderson who got the wicket of Virender Sehwag early in the innings; Sehwag had scored 319 runs when he last played on the ground in April 2008.
India went further down losing three wickets on the last hour of the game: one wicket each for Monty Panesar, Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison. Yuvraj, who is making a Test return and also the One-Day nemesis for England, only contributed 14 runs before falling to the bowling of Harmision. Prior to that Flintoff claimed the wicket of Sachin Tendulkar (37) while spinner Panesar picked up the wicket of VVS Laxman (24).
Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Harbhajan Singh are now at the crease to take forward India’s mishandle innings aiming to put a modest total.
At the end of second day of the Test match captain Dhoni said that we were not really complacent today, but we had an off day in office. Tomorrow, we would look to score 50 runs and get to 250 or 280.
England 1st innings 316 (all out); Strauss 123, Cook 52; Harbhajan Singh 3/96, Amit Mishra 3/99
India’s 1st innings in progress…
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