- News>
- Cricket
Tendulkar, Dravid forced to rebuild after loss of early wickets
Chester-le-Street, July 04: The loss of the three early wickets meant that India had to reconstruct their innings with a partnership between Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid. Of the two, Dravid was slightly more fluent, although he did take a bulk of the strike. The boundary is not especially large and so a halfway total of 116 for three did not represent as large a score as India might have envisaged at the outset.
Chester-le-Street, July 04: The loss of the three early wickets meant that India had to reconstruct their innings with a partnership between Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid. Of the two, Dravid was slightly more fluent, although he did take a bulk of the strike. The boundary is not especially large and so a halfway total of 116 for three did not represent as large a score as India might have envisaged at the outset.
There is no great pace in the pitch and it was the medium pace of Ronnie Irani that seemed to cause the batsmen most trouble. Tendulkar edged him past Alec Stewart who was standing up to the stumps for four and generally found timing the ball difficult as Irani kept a full length and found a consistent line just outside off stump.
The batsmen did not find the same difficulty with Paul Collingwood. The first Durham player to appear for England on his home ground, he was punished to the extent that his three overs went for 23 runs, including a six lifted effortlessly off his legs by Tendulkar over long-on.
The One-Day International at Chester-le-Street got off to a sensational start when Sourav Ganguly was struck on the pad by the first ball of the match. Darren Gough let out a loud appeal and umpire David Shepherd decided it was not swinging down the leg side and so Ganguly was on his way.
Virender Sehwag and Dinesh Mongia took toll of too many balls down the leg side to compile an partnership of 48 at a run a ball before Sehwag played a somewhat lazy shot against James Kirtley to send a catch to the right of Marcus Trescothick at mid-on that the fielder made to look easier than it was.
Mongia followed three overs later, chipping Gough to Andrew Flintoff at short mid-wicket and, although the Indian batsmen were pushing the score along at a healthy rate, they would have been concerned at the loss of wickets.
The One-Day International at Chester-le-Street got off to a sensational start when Sourav Ganguly was struck on the pad by the first ball of the match. Darren Gough let out a loud appeal and umpire David Shepherd decided it was not swinging down the leg side and so Ganguly was on his way.
Virender Sehwag and Dinesh Mongia took toll of too many balls down the leg side to compile an partnership of 48 at a run a ball before Sehwag played a somewhat lazy shot against James Kirtley to send a catch to the right of Marcus Trescothick at mid-on that the fielder made to look easier than it was.
Mongia followed three overs later, chipping Gough to Andrew Flintoff at short mid-wicket and, although the Indian batsmen were pushing the score along at a healthy rate, they would have been concerned at the loss of wickets.
Sourav Ganguly won the toss at Chester-le-Street and, on a bright and breezy day, elected to bat first. India field the same team that played at The Oval on Sunday. England have made changes from the side that beat Sri Lanka at Headingley in that left-arm spinner Ashley Giles comes in to replace Matthew Hoggard, while Graham Thorpe is rested and Michael Vaughan makes his first appearance of the series.
Bureau Report