Vineet Sharma/Zeecric.com
Kanpur: It was India’s willow all the way on the first day of the second Test against Sri Lanka as the final scorecard read 417/2. The innings was studded with some elegant shot-making and one could only feel for the bowlers, who had no help from the Kanpur pitch either.
Gambhir was the man of the day, having crossed one hundred fifty runs, with the panache of the best stroke masters of cricket.
He finally fell to Murali’s guile and was caught out at a score of one hundred sixty seven runs.
Rahul Dravid continued with his good form with the bat, scoring a fine half-century as his shots were in sync with his centurion effort of the previous match.
The first and only jolt of the first half of the day had come in the form of Virender Sehwag’s scalp as the batsman was out at 131 runs from just 122 balls while trying to whack another one out of the park.
Muralitharan was his nemesis too, with the tweaker lofting one up to catch Sehwag’s fancy, resulting in his dismissal. However, Gautam Gambhir kept the tempo up, recording his 8th Test century in the process.
India were off to a great start with Sehwag and Gambhir hitting amazing knocks, reasserting the notion that they are the best opening pair in the world. Their stroke-play turned the scoreboard into a Tokyo taxi, with the total near the 250-run mark in a jiffy.
If the pre-lunch session had India stamped all over it, the post-lunch session was not much different either, barring the wicket of Sehwag.
It was an incredible session of play for India in the morning too, as the world’s most dangerous openers unleashed a flurry of boundaries on the islanders, rotating the strike at will.
Scorecard: India Vs Sri Lanka »
There have been two changes floated into the Indian side with S Sreesanth and Pragyan Ojha coming in for Ishant Sharma and Amit Mishra respectively. Sri Lanka too made a change to their line-up, bringing in Ajantha Mendis, the mystery spinner to have a three pronged spin attack.
With the three spinner theory not working for Sri Lanka, Sangakkara would hope to use the morning dew tomorrow to try and shake the middle order from turning loose an array of records on a batsmen friendly pitch.
First Published: Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 08:51