Close misses for Viru

Watching Sehwag score 99 runs before lunch induced some mixed emotions. I'm always happy to see him bat in his usual, run-a-minute style, but the way he fell short of a ton was grimace-inducing. He went off the boil in the second hour, slowed down 'a bit', woke up to the fact that a ton could be had, and then missed it again with the silliness of not tracking the ball or his partner off the last ball before lunch. Over the years Sehwag has flirted with lots of scoring records (after scoring 228 on the first day at Multan, he was set for a world-record mark, but ended at 309; he could have had a double-century on Boxing Day, which could have made him the only man to have scored 200 runs on the first day of a test match twice since the war; he could have had the world-record opening partnership at Lahore but fell short by three runs; and now, he missed out on becoming only the fifth man to score a century before lunch on the first day of a test). But the fact that he is back to flirting with records is the most important thing for the team that he plays for.