***Official Australia in India***

[Nate]

Ganguly was dubbed "Lord Snooty" while playing county cricket. Once, upon reaching his 50, he raised his bat to the home balcony at Glamorgan. It was empty.

 

[dontcloseyoureyes]

Aussie media's tribute to Ganguly :-

http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/cr...d-and-conquered/2008/10/18/1223750399179.html

Thought that was a pretty good article.

 

[pasag]

Nah, bet Punter's still got him bowling in the nets AWS.

 

[honestbharani]

Indeed. It was hard to legitimately take wickets on, but it wasn't as easy to score freely on as this one is - it was slower and didn't really come on at all, plus the bounce was inconsistent as you said.

wouldn't that make this pitch a better one? At least some runs can be scored here, unlike the snail paced stalemate that we got to see at Bengaluru...

 

[Pratters]

The conditions didn't change much when Australia came on to bat. Yet they find themselves 100 odd for four. If they lose this game, they have only themselves to blame. The pitch is still pretty good and a 2nd inning score of 500 wouldn't have been out of the question had India not bowled as well as they did. Mind you, India were in a dire position before they got to 470. This is cricket - any thing can happen but I will be highly surprised if Australia get close to 500.

 

[Precambrian]

Went to sleep just after Hayden's wicket, thinking that the pitch was flat. And woke up to the big surprise!! It is actually aiding spin a lot, though our seamers were able to make inroads quite early!

Hayden's dismissal - Suggests he's out of form, or god forbid, over the hill? I know he's in good shape, however at his age, usually cricketers are a year into their second job. Another failure in 2nd innings could really concrete that feeling, though I wish him to score well to disprove such notions.

Ponting's dismissal - What's new there? Ponting's been Ishant's bunny in Australia on pitches which afforded bounce. He got away with one lbw, but the other one was too plumb to be ignored. I don't think Ponting read the pitch as well as Bengaluru, and think he was over-defensive.

Katich's dismissal - Purely the union of the bounce of the pitch and Mishy's skill. Again, I think Katich's mind was batting in Bengaluru, and failed to adjust to bounce.

Clarke's dismissal - Is he the "at-stumps" choker? I mean he's been guilty of getting out just before close two or three times before this also na? Again superb bowling by Mishy and good captaincy by Dhoni to get him bowl around the wicket.

Overall - India certainly dominated the day, and Australia were tad too defensive. A run rate of 2.5 is crap on this pitch, and Australia should understand Indians will get Aussie wickets at a good rate, if they hang on with their defensive approach. And kudos to Dhoni, his body language and decision making has been spot on, and unlike Kumble tends to attack more. It also helps that he's witnessed first hand the chinks in the Aussie armour during the CB series early this year.

 

[honestbharani]

Did Dhoni miss a similar chance in the 1st test or is my mind playing tricks?

this one was much easier, if anything,than the one off Kumble at Bengaluru.. I think Dhoni is fantastic, but it is getting tiresome to see Gavaskar tell us how difficult it is to catch those..



We get it, Sunny, it is tough to be a keeper and follow the line of every ball and still react to edges, but that is why they have the ****ing gloves damnit..



Get the feeling Sunny has never kept in his entire life and now that Sachin is at the last stages of his career, he needs a new guy to keep defending at any and every opportunity......

 

[Precambrian]

Oh and one of the most satisfying Day 2 of a test match since Perth.

 

[honestbharani]

Mishra you beauty! Very good ploy to go around the wicket and bowl the googly when the batsman was always going to defend and expect a ball pitched outside leg.

Dhoni was telling him that... heck, he was even telling "pads par daloo, pads use kar raha hai" right after the first delivery.




The guy has a hell of a lot more cricket nous than I have ever given him credit for, tbh...



EDIT: What Dhoni said was "BOwl at his pads, he is using his pads"...

 

[Pratters]

Dhoni is captain cool head. Has the right aggression and makes the decisions quickly. What will happen if Mishra continues bowling well in this game to Kumble? Kumble wont be in the third test XI and deservedly so.

 

[silentstriker]

Called it.

Awesome call.

Zaheer looking 10 times better then any of our bowlers looked. Hope Dhoni doesn't bowl him into the ground though.

Yea, I thought Aussies would be 150/0 at the end of play considering how the pitch was playing - all of the Indian wickets were pretty much idiotic dismissals today. Ganguly had a brain freeze, and Dhoni called runs like an idiot, and then tried to go over the top every ball.

Zak and Ishant bowled really well on a placid pitch, their lines were fantastic. Mishra was surprising, I must say. I did not expect him to be so accurate straight away.

If all four bowl the way they did this time, we have a very strong, balanced attack for these conditions. Ganguly can throw a couple down if needed, and we also have Sehwag and Sachin to provide respectable off and leg spin if need be.

Yes, I just praised the Indian attack - no one better get used to it. Watch the Aussies go 350/0 tomorrow, just to spite me.

 

[honestbharani]

Gavaskar has to be the biggest bull****ter on the planet from amongst the community of good to great cricketers.

When Dhoni failed to take the snick of Hussey off the bowling of Harbhajan (Dhoni had similarly missed Hussey off Kumble very early in his century innings at Bangalore) Mr former Chairman of the ICC Cricket Committee came out with a gem claiming that the reaction time was something like 0.20 seconds and this was not enough for Dhoni to adjust the position of his hands and get behind the snick and hold it - PHEW !!!

The snicks (not the balooned ones) when a keeper is standing right up are not held by the keeper having time to adjust his hand position and get them behind the ball and hold it. There never is enough time for that Mr Gavaskar. These are held by good wicket keepers by having there hands in the best possible position which gives them the best possible chance of having the ball go into their gloves. They do it by staying low till the ball hits the ground and then rising with the ball as it comes off the ground. Alongwith rising upwards, they also move sideways depending upon which way the ball is turning. Thus for Harbhajan (an off spinner) bowling to Hussey (a left hander) Dhoni should have risen alongwith the ball and simultaneously moved to his (Dhoni's) left since it was an off break and not a doosra, This would have meant that he would have had his hands behind the line of the ball as it was snicked. This would give Dhoni the best chance of getting the ball into his gloves. The instinct of the keeper on the snick does help and the gloves (in an already leftward moving keeper) would close over the ball as it hit the gloves since an off break is more likely to take the outside edge. That is why the inner edges are more difficult to take or the bottom edges since these take the ball in the direction different from what the keeper expects taking his hands further away from where the ball is heading.

The fact that Dhoni was hit on his left pad and not his glove and that his gloves were well above the height at which the ball hit him (it was not an under edge) shows that Dhoni got up too fast and his footwork for sideways movement is not good enough. This is not a new problem with Dhoni. It has been their from the very beginning. It was much worse earlier but it still is an issue.

If Gavaskar does not understand wicket keeping, thats okay but for God's sake spare us this bovine excreta.

lol @ SJS and me having the exact same thoughts..


Although I didn't put it across as succinctly as you have done.

 

[honestbharani]

Aussie media's tribute to Ganguly :-

http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/cr...d-and-conquered/2008/10/18/1223750399179.html

lol Sanz... what better do you expect from those guys?????? IIRC, this particular newspaper always seems to come up with stupid stuff like this...

 

[Precambrian]

Article or no article, Ganguly has infurirated and irritated Australia like noone in the past. So such an article is really a compliment for him.

 

[pasag]

Hey things could be worse, could be NZ

 

[Nate]

lol Sanz... what better do you expect from those guys?????? IIRC, this particular newspaper always seems to come up with stupid stuff like this...

What's wrong with the article?

 

[honestbharani]

What's wrong with the article?

They make it out as though they are praising him but concentrating on the Nagpur thing is just cheap... There is something called seeing the positives when someone is calling it quits and I do think he has achieved enough to not let that one bad point sour his career........

 

[Prince EWS]

They make it out as though they are praising him but concentrating on the Nagpur thing is just cheap... There is something called seeing the positives when someone is calling it quits and I do think he has achieved enough to not let that one bad point sour his career........

I thought it was a really good article TBH. I've always been a fan of Ganguly the character as such, but his little idiocynricies and inconsistenies are all apart of that. It was truthful, interesting and pretty objective - that's what people want to read, not an endless supply of tributes that all just praise the guy.

 

[Nate]

They make it out as though they are praising him but concentrating on the Nagpur thing is just cheap... There is something called seeing the positives when someone is calling it quits and I do think he has achieved enough to not let that one bad point sour his career........

It's the most honest Australian piece of writing on Ganguly I've ever read. To lambust him with praise would be falsehood, that's not how the majority of Australians see him. Instead, they hail the good and comment on what we don't like about him.

 

[Mister Wright]

White could end up being a very successful test bowler if batsmen continue to play for the spin.