Day 3 Galle test discussion and thoughts

[The Outsider]

Must say that our spin bowling was absolute tripe. When the pace bowlers brought India into the game with a realistic chance of dismissing Sri Lanka for around 400-425, our spinners completely bottled up. It's ridiculous to think some people suggested India go in with 3 spinners. It was the same story as the Nagpur test against South Africa. Harbhajan looked all at sea and the lesser said about Ojha the better. In fact is this Ojha guy even a bowler? Frankly, I don't see anything that he does which cannot be done by Yuvraj. Luckily, his performance means Mishra will be back in for the next test. We should really stick with Mishra for the entire season and give him a chance to develop with some confidence. I would even take Munaf over Ojha. Harbhajan has the excuse of not being 100% fit and would really have to come into his own in the next match for India to have a chance. Sangakkara's declaration has given India a much better chance of saving the test. If Sri Lanka had batted on and got close to 575, which did appear possible after the pace bowlers had tired out and the spinners were dishing rubbish, India would have been in much deeper trouble. As things stand, saving the follow on is pretty much match saved. With Sehwag in this kind of form, Sri Lanka are unlikely to give India any target less than 4 RPO to chase in the final innings. Sehwag - what a batsman he has become! The manner in which he handled the short pitch bowling from Malinga and later the yorkers was exemplary. Dravid and Tendulkar's dismissals were atrocious given that they have a collective experience of 300+ test matches. There are enough chances for them to redeem themselves in the series. Needless to say, Laxman and Sehwag will have to bat most of the first session tomorrow to get India to a position of safety. There is obvious turn and bounce in the track, but the pitch is still playing good. I don't think it will continue to play good though and surviving for any substantial period of time like more than 60-70 overs in the last innings is going to be tough.

[saneindian]

Gambhir's technical flaw of playing across the line is now becoming a problem. He has been getting out like this too often these days and hardly plays in the V especially early on in the innings. Earlier he works on this problem, better it will be for him.

[Lord]

Bhajji's really overrated.cant believe hes hailed as best offie after Murali.Swann is defintely better i would excuse Ojha.he did his best.hes not even the best left armer in the country n shouldnt hv been picked.it isnt his fault that he was.

[Sid]

Its not looking good for india at this point but positive thing is that sehwag is there so if stays there for first session then we will be close that follow on target.Key for India is the pair at the crease needs to have big partnership .Once we reach follow on target the match will be pretty much a drawn match. For spinners Harbhajan has been a big disappointment for quite sometime now and really he has been playing for so long consistently becoz of lack of quality options and back up rather than consistency in performance.And for Ojha and Mishra both look ordinary spinners to me but I will give more chances to Ojha at the moment as Mishra has had his chances and he has not grabbed his chance,Ojha should be given a fair chance in 2-3 test matches ,if he doesnt then he should be dropped

[Sir john]

ojha good for limited overs only viru rocks today.need to score double tommarow,

[Tendulkar_Bhai]

Bhajji's really overrated.cant believe hes hailed as best offie after Murali.Swann is defintely better i would excuse Ojha.he did his best.hes not even the best left armer in the country n shouldnt hv been picked.it isnt his fault that he was.

Ojha is still unproven at international level but doubt very much he will achieve even a fraction of what Bhaji has. I cant believe any true Indian fan would make such a comment given the number of matches he has won for us in the past and how important him and Kumble were to the team, i think between them they got about 500+ wickets. He is still the 2nd highest wicket taking off spinner in the GAME and at times on flat pitches he does bowl quite flat and fast but this is only natural when theres nothing in the pitch, i havent seen any of this match so cant comment on his performance. Off spinning is probably the easiest kind of bowling so to take so many wickets is special. Maybe also he struggles abit with the pressure of being number 1 spin bowler and the fact that all our other pace bowlers are useless (par Zaheer) its not his fault.

[coffee_rules]

Dravid's call after the misfield was a huge blunder. Sehwag ran the first one quicker, and he was near the non-striker's end. He could have judged that there was no second run. I think Dravid on the farther end couldn't have judged it properly, but since Sehwag ran the first one quicker, he must have thought Sehwag was interested in getting back. Either way, it's Dravid's fault considering the amount of experience he has. Never run on a misfield! Can't blame tendulkar, as he gets that shot 99 out of 100 times. You have to back your plays. No need in blocking for ever. WIth the amount of risks Sehwag takes, we are looking at 140/3 instead of 60/3.

[Ram]

Havent seen a ball of the match so far so cant really say much, but it looks like if Sehwag goes early tomorrow, barring more rain, we’re certainly staring at defeat on day 5.

[Lord]

Ojha is still unproven at international level but doubt very much he will achieve even a fraction of what Bhaji has. I cant believe any true Indian fan would make such a comment given the number of matches he has won for us in the past and how important him and Kumble were to the team, i think between them they got about 500+ wickets. He is still the 2nd highest wicket taking off spinner in the GAME and at times on flat pitches he does bowl quite flat and fast but this is only natural when theres nothing in the pitch, i havent seen any of this match so cant comment on his performance. Off spinning is probably the easiest kind of bowling so to take so many wickets is special. Maybe also he struggles abit with the pressure of being number 1 spin bowler and the fact that all our other pace bowlers are useless (par Zaheer) its not his fault.

dude,i'm not saying hes crap or anything,just that he really isnt performing as expected of a top bowler.he hasnt really stepped into the role of a senior bowler.while Kumble was there he did well,but once Kumble,Bhajji has gone south.its ridiciloys to thik that he would look as ineffective as he looked today after playing 10 yrs of test cricket.n it isnt a rare sight with him.

[Fontaine]

Must say that our spin bowling was absolute tripe. When the pace bowlers brought India into the game with a realistic chance of dismissing Sri Lanka for around 400-425, our spinners completely bottled up. It's ridiculous to think some people suggested India go in with 3 spinners. It was the same story as the Nagpur test against South Africa. Harbhajan looked all at sea and the lesser said about Ojha the better. In fact is this Ojha guy even a bowler? Frankly, I don't see anything that he does which cannot be done by Yuvraj. Luckily, his performance means Mishra will be back in for the next test. We should really stick with Mishra for the entire season and give him a chance to develop with some confidence. I would even take Munaf over Ojha. Harbhajan has the excuse of not being 100% fit and would really have to come into his own in the next match for India to have a chance. Sangakkara's declaration has given India a much better chance of saving the test. If Sri Lanka had batted on and got close to 575, which did appear possible after the pace bowlers had tired out and the spinners were dishing rubbish, India would have been in much deeper trouble. As things stand, saving the follow on is pretty much match saved. With Sehwag in this kind of form, Sri Lanka are unlikely to give India any target less than 4 RPO to chase in the final innings. Sehwag - what a batsman he has become! The manner in which he handled the short pitch bowling from Malinga and later the yorkers was exemplary. Dravid and Tendulkar's dismissals were atrocious given that they have a collective experience of 300+ test matches. There are enough chances for them to redeem themselves in the series. Needless to say, Laxman and Sehwag will have to bat most of the first session tomorrow to get India to a position of safety. There is obvious turn and bounce in the track, but the pitch is still playing good. I don't think it will continue to play good though and surviving for any substantial period of time like more than 60-70 overs in the last innings is going to be tough.

Good post. I agree with most of this except for Bhajji not being fully fit? If he was a fast bowler then it would obviously be different but bowling spin doesn't demand a huge amount of physical exertion. Maybe if he had an off day, fair enough. Except he had an awful day where he never looked close to taking a wicket.

[Cricketics]

Sehwag and Laxman there.. Things look cool. Overall, we should be dissapointed that we couldn't capitalize on the good start we had on day 3 after getting 2 quick wickets of the opener and samarweera. 500 was atleast 75+ more then what I expected lankans to score. Anyways, It's a test match tails are bound to score runs most of the time now a days. Batting wise, we aren't in horrible position. a good partnership here and we would avoid seeing some crazy nasty negative predictions from people about day 5 Indian defeat.

[Guest Hiten.]

I dozed off thinking it'll be a washout, but what in the world were we doing allowing Herath and Malinga score almost 150 between them ? Our batting might have failed somewhat, but I refuse to buy that India are under pressure considering Sehwag is on the crease. There is no way we'd score anything less than 400 with Sehwag, VVS (still batting) and UV, MSD, Bhajji to come down the order. SL might end up gaining a healthy lead of 60-70 runs but it'll be futile knowing that there is only 2 days left for the test match.

[ludhianvi]

The opening spell by Ishant and Mithun was very probing. After taking the new ball, Ishant bowled some great overs albeit there was some assistance from the early conditions. If you missed that, then it is worth watching that spell again.

[Ram]

Sehwag makes batting look so ridiculously easy and uncluttered that while he’s there, he can create an illusion of security and make the bowling look worser and the pitch look better. That is why, its important that he does not get dismissed early tomorrow. If that happens, the Lankans who are generally very good at crowding upon opposition batsmen in their home turf, will make things really hard for us.

[cowboysfan]

we should give bhajji a pass,obviously he should not have played at all but thats on the coach and captain.

[saneindian]

Good post. I agree with most of this except for Bhajji not being fully fit? If he was a fast bowler then it would obviously be different but bowling spin doesn't demand a huge amount of physical exertion. Maybe if he had an off day, fair enough. Except he had an awful day where he never looked close to taking a wicket.

Down with flu a day before the test match and then you do some damage to your hamstring on day 1 of the test, can't get any worse especially for Bhajji as a proper pivot at the time of delivery is a huge part of his bowling action. he was struggling on the field and taking lot of fluids to keep him going as humidity was making it worse for his body still recovering from the bout of flu. Captain should take the blame for giving Bhajji a long spell, should have got Sehwag and Yuvi to bowl once Bhajji started to get hit.

[satishg]

I dont think we are in that bad a situation at all. With Sehwag and VVS at the crease and some more batting to follow, we should expect to score something around 420 at least. It is going to be interesting though as you never know what to expect when Viru is around, so early wicket and getting Yuvi in against Murali will make it really dicey for us. So these 2 should see off the morning session without much damage. Also it was very disappointing to see our fast bowlers pick 4 early wickets and yet concede close to 200 runs from that point on. Well if Bhajji was really that flat then Dhoni should have gone with Mishra for this match. A fully fit player is always better than an unfit one no matter how good the unfit player is. Anyway it was good to see Ishant bowl the way he did, and Mithun has done a great job in his debut. So hopefully with a fit Bhajji for the next match, we should have a better bowling attack. Hope MSD wins the toss next time around, that would be a great advantage!

[Ravi.]

Hi all. I'm new here. India was famous for spinners but now we dont have much options.I can understand this in pace department but why dont we have good spinners? I think standard of our domestic cricket has got worse. Thats why bowlers like Mishra,Ojha who perform well in domestic cricket, hardly perform in International cricket.

[The Dark Horse]

Was good to see Ishant and Mithun bowling well early, but they got tired and the spinners didnt sustain the pressure. Everything depends on Sehwag and the support he gets.

[The Dark Horse]

Hi all. I'm new here. India was famous for spinners but now we dont have much options.I can understand this in pace department but why dont we have good spinners? I think standard of our domestic cricket has got worse. Thats why bowlers like Mishra' date='Ojha who perform well in domestic cricket, hardly perform in International cricket.[/quote'] Welcome to ICF:icflove: Yea thats wat is baffling, lets hope its just the odd failure, Indian players are known to be good players of spin, so ideally we should produce good spinners.