India have a serious problem with injuries

Zaheer’s partner, Laxmipathy Balaji is a talented bowler. He has a good action and release. But he is inexperienced. He is making the mistake of going from the corner of the crease at the point of his delivery. It is allowing batsmen to free their arms. He needs to cut down on his angle, come closer to the stumps. He doesn’t have variations but he can make up for it with a wicket-to-wicket line.

I was impressed with Ramesh Powar and he should have bowled more than six overs. He has a good line and length and he bowled with a lower trajectory, which was perfectly suited to the type of wicket in Rawalpindi. He didn’t try to flight the ball much, which was a good thing.

But he needs to shed his weight. More so because he is a bowler, that too off-spin and needs a good pivoting at the point of delivery. It also showed up in his throw from the boundary line since it wasn’t coming in flat. Such is the nature of this game that it would brutally expose your shortcomings.

I also felt Sourav Ganguly didn’t bat in his natural style. He is an attacking player and he was trying to defend and that’s not the way forward for him. It seems he is getting worried about his batting and trying too many things. As it is he is getting out so why not play naturally? He should have also given himself a bowl. Though the wicket was not conducive there was no harm for our Golden Arm to turn his arm over.

I also didn’t like one aspect about Indian batting. It is common these days for off-spinners to drift on to your pads and to have three fielders deep on the boundary line on the onside, so hitting fours and sixes becomes difficult. But you can always takes ones and twos. A bowler absolutely hates when he is being milked around all the time. In frustration, he will bowl a loose ball — that’s your chance to capitalise.

Two outstanding innings of the day came first from Shahid Afridi and then from Sachin Tendulkar. Afridi batted well but his dismissal was terrible — in much the same way Virender Sehwag did himself in in the first game. Afridi is so good with the straight bat shots, he didn’t need to go for that wild slog. I don’t believe in ifs and buts of the game but the scoring really went down for Pakistan after Afridi was out.

(Cricket News)