Sunday, August 12, 2007

Eh? Bat again?

I must confess to being puzzled by India's decision to bat again (and not enforce the follow-on in bowler friendly conditions). Panesar had gone early enough in the day that India would not be worried about having had an excessively long bowl in the first innings; the conditions would have suited the swing of Zaheer and RP Singh; England would have been psychologically under the cosh; and so on. Instead, India have chosen to first try and place the match out of England's reach (my guess is that they must have thought of setting England 500 to win in some 120 odd overs). But now, as they stumble around at 15-3, they've handed a nice little boost to England. Advantage still India, but perhaps not in quite the relentless way they'd have preferred (to my mind, this decision speaks of a negative assessment of how the swing bowlers bowled yesterday for large parts of the day).

3 Comments:

Blogger G said...

IMO Several reasons
- We did not bowl too well on 3rd day spraying all around the wicket
- THere is news coming in that Zak has some kind of injuries
- obviously all the previous matches where we failed to defend for 2 sessions or failed to chase 150 or so

12:32 AM  
Blogger Samir Chopra said...

Gana,

I think its come down to their assessment of how well the bowlers had done (or could do). On the third day, they'd only taken four batsmen's wickets by tea (before the mini-collapse later in the day). My reaction (impatient at times) was triggered by the fact that conditions were good for bowling, better than they were on the third day. And then, later in the day, Dravid's innings just drove me nuts :)

6:59 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I went to that match. I wonder if RP Singh will come back to play for a county. He seems to suit English conditions really well - it would be great to see him here.

11:36 AM  

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