Fielding still slips, batting saves day

All that, with a new battery of specialised coaches8212;Ravi Shastri, Robin Singh and Venkatesh Prasad8212;looking on. Only young Manoj Tiwary put up an inspiring show on a day of slipshod fielding.

For the second morning in a row, the Indian team underwent a rigorous fielding session where the 25 players8217; skills were put to test on mainly a few fronts8212;pick-and-throw, close-in catching and ground-fielding.

Most of the players, barring a few like a seemingly lethargic Sourav Ganguly, went through the pick-and-throw drills quite well, courtesy fresh legs with the late morning heat yet to beat down on them.

But the real put-off came later on in the morning, when it came to close-in catching and ground-fielding. Except for a noticeably energetic Manoj Tiwary, who earned a lot of praise from fielding coach Robin later on for his smart heroics, the rest of the players, all known faces, slipped through a spree of catches and came up with pedestrian ground-fielding efforts.

In a special drill8212;perhaps the only one that seriously tested the players8217; skills8212;about 8 to 10 players line-up in a semi-circle, closely covering the off-side as Robin, with the bat, was cleverly mixing up lobbed catches with scorching grounded strokes.

That8217;s when Ganguly, Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir and stumper Mahendra Singh Dhoni kept botching up time and again. At one point during the closed-door drill, mediapersons looked in awe as Ganguly let go three catching chances in a row, manning gully. Ganguly8217;s poor catching came after earlier in the day when the 34-year-old clearly struggled to run hard during the pick-and-throw drill, even as a slimmer Sehwag and even Munaf Patel ran around hard, for a change.

Only 21-year-old middle-order batsman Tiwary stood tall among the ruins. Manning the short extra-cover region, the youngster flung himself around and pulled off a number of sharp catches, while the less-agile seniors clapped at his efforts.

Expectedly, Robin later walked up to the day8217;s lone 8216;performer8217; and kept advising him and patted him on the back.

The players made up for the morning8217;s poor showing, so to say, by displaying a neat 8216;performance8217; in the day8217;s second session. The late afternoon session saw the batsman knock the ball around at Eden8217;s indoor nets8212;thanks to afternoon showers8212;and the second round8217;s catching practice, too, was up to the mark.

In contrast to the uninspiring morning session, the second round saw the batsman use the long handle, with Ganguly leading the charge. The highlight was the manner in which a possessed Ganguly suddenly began carting the bowling around at the expansive Eden ground, but not before his Bengal counterpart Ranadeb Bose got him caught behind off a snorter.

Whether the effort was conscious we will never know, but Ganguly appeared to have pulled up his socks during the catching skills session in the second round after a shoddy morning8217;s outing.