Dravid's decision to bat first on such a lively wicket against a formidable pakistan bowling attack is shocking and betrays his arrogance and/or sheer lack of judgement. He just played into the hands of the pakies by giving them a chance to carry out their plans (they didnt make a green top wicket in lahore for nothing - they did it because they had a plan in mind .. which was to rock the indian top order early), whereas he should have denied them the same opertunity. He should have given the solid indian batting line up the best chance of utilising their potential by fielding second (and thus batting later when the pitch had become docile). But he made it easy for the paki bowlers while at the samne time making it tough to our baters. We lost the Lahore test with that whimsical decision of his at the toss. And when the indians had taken 7 paki wickets dravid took the pacers off instead of trying to knock the tail out and thus allowed the tail to get pak a 200 run lead. If he had used fast bowlers then i doubt akhtar and gul would have lasted so long. I have to say that if we lose this test it will be mainly because of these lousy decisions by the captain ..& some very bad umpiring
A nice 100 under tough conditions..... Gotta be difficult for selectors for the next Test. Whom are they going to drop as Ganguly will be fit (& it's very difficult to drop him, even when it will be the right decision). Will it be Chopra? or Laxman? I personally feel that Chopra work quite beautifully with the new ball and saves the Indian middle order from the new ball quite efficiently. We can only see his usefullness when he fails.... Like yesterday. But i feel that he will be the one to go (no centuries...& in Indian crickt, they count). It will really be bad if he is axed.
Though Dravid's captaincy has been pretty good, he erred in setting the field for Agarkar in his first two overs yesterday. He set a 7-2 offside field for him for both the left-handers. Agarkar's stock delivery is the one that comes back in for the left-handers. He needs more men on the legside. But Agarkar was forced to bowl on the offside and as a result could not bring back his deliveries into the batsman. This is the same mistake Ganguly committed in the early part of Australia series before he corrected. We all know what happened afterwards. A bowler should bowl to his strengths. Dravid would have watched Agarkar a lot and I don't know why he set a field like that. Anyhow, he changed the field later and Agarkar bowled well then. Particularly two deliveries were very close. One was not even a centimeter away from the offstump of Taufeeq. Hope Dravid does not commit mistakes like this. I can understand that Dravid felt the weakness of batsmen on the offside. That does not mean they would play Agarkar's in-dippers well.
i think that indians could have bowl first on the track which was helping seemers and even like gul irfan pathan would have get some wickets. but yuvraj and irfan both have shown a good temprament that they can handle pressure situation.
i think the way yuvi smashed 112 runs in just the third test which he has played so far,especially at the time when india were trailing 125/6 has indicated the new ara of classic batting in test matches.he had proved his mettle ,power ,stroke play in oneday international but this 112 has put indian management in a fix who to drop in the third match when s. ganguly is declared fully fit? also his innings has put india in a better position to fight back . ys.krishnakant05/04/04 9:10 pm
