England tour of India, Nov-Dec 2008

[ssp]

Flintoff gone too. Mishra gets his wicket. Now we can gain control of the match.

Eng 282/6 at close. Draw still looks favourite, but those 2 wickets have given India a chance to set up an interesting final day chase. Good fightback by England. They were 1-2 in the 2nd over.

Let's hope we get good weather to force a result.

[PKBasu]

Nice bit of work by Mishra and Gambhir to get rid of Flintoff with the last ball of the day. And with that India are decisively on top, with just the tail to bowl to and 171 runs ahead. Another absorbing day of test cricket, with the bat and ball evenly matched.

[prasen9]

Mishra bowled beautifully his first three overs. Maybe he faded off after that? I thought Dhoni was too late in introducing him. I went to bed after that. Harbhajan was utter cra*. He does not spin his off-spinners anymore and neither does he have the zip to get wickets like Kumble. He should take some advise from Bedi or Prasanna to fix his technical flaws and try to get his off-spinners spinning again. Also, too many easy runs were given away. Dhoni should have gone to the defensive 8-1 field to choke up the runs earlier, and given that KP and AF were looking to hit, they may have got out sooner. But, anyway, hindsight is always 20/20. Hope India can get England out within another 50 runs and set 400-450 off 75-80 overs in the last day.

[prasen9]

Bindra said that England had asked for Mohali. Then, they were astoundingly stupid or exceedingly defensive. In northern India and parts of north eastern India, the winter days (December/Jan) are so short that you cannot have full 90 overs bowled more often than not. I avoid flying to Delhi if I can during winter because of fog-related cancellations. Why on earth would someone have a match in Mohali during that time? Bangalore had refused to host a match. Even if Eden is out because of crass political reasons, what about Hyderabad or Nagpur or Cuttack? Evan our Kanpur or Lucknow test grounds may have had less loss of overs. Expecting competence from BCCI is stupid on my part, I guess. The December/Jan tests should always be in Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad first and then others. The other centers should host at other times.

[ssp]

Silly decision to play in Mohali at this time of year. This is effectively a 4 day test as we have lost 15-20 overs daily.
Great morning session for India. Last 4 wickets taken for only 20. Now we need a Sehwag special to build the lead to 370+ and hopefully get about 75 overs tomorrow to take 10 English wickets.

Nooo. Sehwag is needlessly run out. 30-1 and now Dravid is batting.....Surely we need quick soring. Why not get Dhoni or Yuvraj batting??
Dravid gone too. 36-2 and worse still we are crawling at a pthetic rate. Last 8 overs have resulted in 2 runs and 1 wicket lost! No change in batting order. Gambir and Tendulkar need to get 1s and 2s to build the lead and ease the pressure being built up by Broad and Flintoff.

If we fail to win this match we can blame our slow batting in both innings. Mad tactics today...scoring at just over 2 runs an over and the last 11 overs have resulted in 8 runs. How about taking singles? Tendulkar struggling against Broad and Flintoff has bottled up Gambir.

[suresh]

Prasen,

November-December is monsoon time in Chennai and hence not a good time for tests here

Suresh

[ssp]

Very painful progress by India. 134-4 off 50 overs. Another 50+ runs would have been handy for an overnight declaration, but a draw looks the favourite especially as only 60 overs were possible today.

Pathetic advert for Test cricket.

[prasen9]

Prasen,

November-December is monsoon time in Chennai and hence not a good time for tests here

Suresh

Suresh,

You are right about December. Averages. But, maybe Nov or Jan is not that bad. Anyway, bad light/short days is guaranteed in the north --- almost, but, with rain you at least have a chance? Maybe then Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Kolkata in December.

[sameerph]

Maybe then Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Kolkata in December.

These tests were eariler scheduled for Mumbai & Ahemedabad. But the venues were shifted due to terror strikes in Mumbai.

In any case, the cricket is mainly played in India during winters as opposed to other countries such as Australia , SA, England or NZ. This also is a major cause for slow & dead wickets in subcontinent as it is diificult to keep live grass on wickets in winter.

Centers in North India also face major problem of due in night sessions in ODI's.

[Kumar]

Prasen,

November-December is monsoon time in Chennai and hence not a good time for tests here

Suresh

Suresh,

You are right about December. Averages. But, maybe Nov or Jan is not that bad. Anyway, bad light/short days is guaranteed in the north --- almost, but, with rain you at least have a chance? Maybe then Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Kolkata in December.

I think Jan thru March is the best season for cricket in india (sticking to south india centers in january)... April thru June is probably very hot and then moonson season starts in most of india...and other opportunity is probably September - october (south indian venues in early part of september)

And prasen's link just threw me totally off the loop. There is no way, this link is accurate. no way, we have less rain in october or november(link shows no rain for october / november ) when compared to September let alone december. Until last few years, rain in december was unheard of in Chennai. Max. rains happened for one month duration between October 15th and November 15th.

Coming back to cricket, wouldn't it be awesome if Dhoni declared? with around 75-80 overs left and 285 runs remaining, it would be a 50-50 proposition (especially considering Pietersen's potential). but if India is to be considered the best in Test cricket, they have to show some guts and go for win...

[ssp]

Strange tactics by India today. Still batting after lunch with a lead of 370+. Boring nonsense.
Yuvraj fails to get his 100 by getting run out! 3rd batsman dismissed by this method.England will be pleased by India batting on.
Another possible win spurned by an Indian team.

Now Dhoni goes for a duck.241/6.

[suresh]

Prasen,

November-December is monsoon time in Chennai and hence not a good time for tests here

Suresh

Suresh,

You are right about December. Averages. But, maybe Nov or Jan is not that bad. Anyway, bad light/short days is guaranteed in the north --- almost, but, with rain you at least have a chance? Maybe then Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Kolkata in December.

Your link doesn't give the numbers for Oct/Nov. Take it from me, there is a very good chance of rain during November. Jan-Feb-March will be ideal to tests in Chennai. The last test match in Chennai got very lucky -- a depression that formed in the Bay of Bengal decided not to visit Chennai.

[ssp]

The plan to get Yuvi and Gambir to get both 100s has failed. Both fall short.
A win would have been possible if we scored a little more quickly in both inns. Yesterday's crawl was baffling. Before Yuvi came in we were scoring at less than 2 an over!! Why?
I suppose Dhoni realised that getting 10 English wickets in 60 overs was not likely.

[prasen9]

Suresh, thanks for the clarification; got it. This is one case where I could not care less that the guys did not get a 100; in general, I think it is a useless number borne out of the fact that we have 10 fingers in our hand. Jay had said something similar in posts before. India should have declared and given England 55 overs to play.

[puneets]

India should have declared and given England 55 overs to play.

Why ? There was very little chance to get Eng out in 55 overs. But given the way KP and Flintoff were batting yesterday, there could have been a nail biting finish in store had we given them 55-60 overs to play.

Since the match was most likely over by that time, it was a golden chance to get Yuvraj Singh some batting practice. He is slated to be a replacement for Ganguly..and he deserves every bit of match practice. They always say "batting in the nets is no where compared to batting in the middle". Why not put this adage in practice ?