A tale of two matches

The first two matches between India and England have been great. In both the matches, the first day's play almost pushed one team in the corner and the other team dominated the whole match and most of the sessions. The first inning lead proved decisive in the end.

Also, both the matches showed that bowlers which were the weaknesses for both the teams had a much better than expected performance. The batting line up (except Indian first inning in the second test) has been off and on, with most batsman scoring runs but not consistently.

Lets dive in to the details. The first test started of with a sunny first day and after winning the toss English top order made merry of the sunny conditions and some inexperienced Indian bowling to score strong 268-4. The English domination (or I should Vaughan & Strauss domination as no one else score more than 40) of the day is moderated by two late wickets at the end of the day. The next morning overnight rain made the batting difficult and Indian bowlers put the ball in the right places (there goes the greatest cliche of bowling) to reduce England to under 300.

The rest of the match had bowlers dominating the batsman except when Kevin Peterson was batting. It was KP's brilliance in a 119 (25 overs) partnership with Mark Prior that put India against the wall. Had they not scored runs at such a fast pace, the match result would have been different. Just take back 45 runs and England would have not been able to set up and attacking field.

Scoring 380 runs in the 4th innings is always difficult, especially with the rain expected to curtail more than half the final day. So chances of India winning this match was almost nil. Unlike recent results, India held the fort for 96 overs just long enough to earn a last wicket draw albeit with some luck from weather and the umpires.

To be fair to the Indians, few of their top order players got some unlucky decision and who knows what would have happened had Dravid not being given out. I would say the test would still have been a draw, with much more even ending - something like India 320-7 with either team's victory possible rather than 285-9 with just English victory possible. Over all Enlisg team dominated most of the session with India winning some sessions due to bowling.

The second test was also decided by toss and weather. The first day damp playing field and conditions meant that the team batting first would be at a disadvantage. Dravid won the toss and put English in to bat. Indian bowler bowled beautifully to push English to 169-7. As expected this put English on the back foot and they were all out for 198 within the first hour of day 2.

This time Indian batting flourished to take a commanding lead of over the next two days of 280+ runs. With two days of sunny weather expected, this almost batted English out of the game with English win highly unlikely. English batsman (or should I say Vaughan and Strauss or may be Colly) played excellent cricket during the first two sessions of the fourth day.

Indian bowlers came down hard with the second new ball in the restricted English from 270-3 at the time the new ball was taken to 355 all out. A target of 73 would never have been difficult, but excellent bowling from Tremlett (12 for 3 in 7 overs) meant that India lost three wickets on the fifth day morning though they never looked like they would crumble. Before I end, must mention the two well reported non-cricketing issues.

The first test won rave review for the Lord's management for laying new golf quality irrigation and drainage (porous sand:) system as well as excellent efforts by the groundsman in getting almost 350 overs in the worst English rainfall in decades.

The second test won bad reviews for the player behavior. Let me be clear about it. Barging into batsman is foolish and as childish as putting jelly beans on the ground.

In fact, putting jelly beans may be okay in domestic county cricket, but is not warranted in International matches. If you want to put jelly beans on the ground, you deserve to be sent back to the county cricket. No amount of explanation will justify so apologize and move ahead. If the whole teams starts justifying it, you are responsible fo it attracting the attention not the media.

About barging into non-striker batsman, I have no idea what you gain. He is not facing you and would have ample time to get back to normal mind set by the time he faces the ball unlike sledging to the striker. Also, you are sure to earn penalty from the match referee. That is plain stupid.

I am giving Sreesanth some slack about the beamer and run up as his run up and accuracy was bad all through the match. So I accept his explanation that those were unintentional.

About sledging, I can understand occasional sledging before the bowler starts the run up. But continuous sledging shoudl be banned and players penalized by the match referee.

Finally, at the end two hard test matches, India lead by 1-0 and have a chance to wining their first series in England since 1986 and first series win by any team in England since 2001. The third test is important for both the teams and I believe we will see unchanged teams with India going for a draw. I think all three results are possible with the team showing more will to win achieving their objective.