The day two of the first test ended with India taking a lead with seven first innings wickets in hand. Laxman and Ganguly are at the crease though having scored their runs in contrasting styles. Both batsmen are in a way on trial. While Laxman scored his runs fluently with some signature shots, Saurav was playing for life. He is just a pale shadow of his glorious past when spinners were despatched over the boundary with disdain. But here we have the Indian captain who was showing extreme caution to the Zimbabwean spinners.
Earlier, the innings of Zimbabwe was terminated with Pathan cleaning up the tail. Poor Harbhajan toiled in vain to get his 200th wicket in test matches. He is not the bowler that he appears on Indian wickets. Forget what people like Sidhu say about the cause, such as the Kookaburra ball. Wonder what Shane Warne could have done with Indian balls! Here we had Warne who was spinning the ball a mile on English pitches while Harbhajan could not achieve any turn of significance on a slow Zimbabwean wicket.
Sehwag and Gambhir got out after giving a good start against a none-too impressive attack. Dravid was his usual self before getting out uncharacteristically. This where I feel that batsmen of other teams are far superior to the Indian batsmen. Remember the record score of 380 posted by Hayden versus Zimbabwe not too long ago. Attapattu, the Sri Lankan captain has perfected the art of scoring double hundreds when playing the likes of Zimbabwe and Bangladesh.
The decision to keep Kaif out of the playing eleven is just ridiculous. Maybe, it is the only way of giving Ganguly the opportunity. Finally, what about Dheeraj Jadhav, the man who replaced Sachin?
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