Caught the game finally live and caught the highlights of the previous two days. Observations so far:
Track is good. Deteriorating yes, but very very slowly. Still as good a pitch you can get to bat on as any in India for day 3. No real devils in the pitch. Just turn from the rough spots off the bowlers' footmarks and some exaggerated bounce off those rough patches. BDK showing why he and Root are a class above as test match batsmen, Smith a slightly distant third and Kohli a very distant fourth off the so called Fab 4 IMO. God knows, Kohli has the potential to be the best of these 4 as he has the ability to dominate bowlers to a higher degree than these 3, with only Smith being close to him in that regard, but he has to first start putting such big performances on board. He is not even the clear best test batsman in India in terms of performances so far.
I like his leadership style of being very inspirational to the boys and I am sure the guys really respond to that in the team but for God's sake, he needs to add a little bit of patience to his captaincy. He just seems like he will change the bowler the moment he feels the bowler is not doing what he expects off him. And that stumping chance shows why MSD would still be a very big favorite for an AT team for the SC as keeper. Forget the runs, he will just get so many wickets with his keeping to the spinners.
And lol @ OS and Daemon going on about Ashwin not bowling well when the pitch was true. Since when is it a crime that a bowler who has been playing quite a bit of T20 in recent weeks takes a bit of time to get into the groove of a test match... Classic Sehwag - runs - flat wicket style posting there. It is a true pitch even now and the spinners have bowled brilliantly to get us where we are.
And lastly, feel very bad for Ronchi, even though it probably evened out with the Watling call. CAnt really blame the umpire as it did look worse than it actually was but it is precisely why you need DRS, not every dismissal that looks out is actually out and not every dismissal that looks not out is not out. Guess they should bring in Nicholls for Guptill and see who from that middle order can open the batting. No point in leaving out good players for hacks. Just because they are in India does not mean they should follow the INdian stupidity in team selection.
EDIT: Ash to BDK this morning was some serious high quality cricket and what a gem to get a batsman as good as BDK out... Loved it and Jaddu was awesome at the other end too, he actually created more problems for BDK than Ashwin.
