What an interesting day of play! The first test match of the India-Australia series has shown signs of a competitive test series. Now this match really looks alive and kicking isn’t it? Not yet though!

To start with, I was pleased to see Kumble go in with two spinners because somehow it made sense to play to your strengths and utilize all the experience in hand. I really thought that India should use a two spin attack for the series and exit from their earlier modes in Australia. The pitch was interesting, seems to assist a bit of everything and maybe was a touch sluggish and slow for the batters. The bounce was beautiful.

Australia got off to a roaring start with Phil Jacques and India’s eternal nemesis Mathew ‘the bully’ Hayden, who knocked them all over the park. And it looked like it was going to be a long hard sapping day for the series. Zaheer Khan bowled well early on and quite often troubled Jacques. All the play and misses didn’t yield any wicket and both the bowlers were maybe a touch short from the ideal length required in Australian conditions.

India’s fight back led by Anil Kumble was remarkable and they picked up the Australian batsmen at regular intervals. Zaheer’s dismissal of Ponting was an absolute beauty with the ball just moving out at the last minute. Hussey was clueless on Anil’s wrong one and walked back as fast as he came in. The rest actually perished to their own rashness. Symonds was at his attacking best and maybe pushed himself a bit too much to the point of being reckless… “Me hate India, me club ball ard”. He perished playing a rash stroke.

The delicate Clarke seems to now have a perennial problem of getting out edging the ball to slip early on in his innings. This has been happening quite often and if anyone thinks it is only the sub-continent teams that get out hanging their bats… Duh? Watch Clarke, watch Border, watch Smith.

Kumble has obviously seen a lot of kung-fu inspired sports movies off-late. His new delivery is the monkey style nimble footed hop and bowl ball. The eagle style and nosed Gilchrist was so annoyed by his monkey styled bowling run-up, decided to swat the ball to East Africa and ended up skying it to the safe hands of Tendulkar who was trying hard to suppress his laughter, while the ball was in the air. What a sucker!!

Nevertheless, Anil once again was India’s best pick and ended up with a five wicket hall. One wonders whether over these years, would India have ever won a test game or for the matter draw, without this guy. Harbhajan was disappointing… disappointing because he is still bowling in 20-20 mode… darting all the balls in. He is dangerous when he flights it and gets the ball to loop and dip. All now it takes today to keep him in check is to have one go at him all the way to the boundary and he will never again bowl that loop for an entire session.

The fielding was comical to say the least… specifically the outfielders with fielding captain Sourav ‘Bungle’y leading the lethargic charges. All the chases to the fence were a mere jog in the park and at many points it looked like the fielders were praying hard that the ball reaches the long boundary… “mus-s-st re-e-a-c-h ball…t… argh! Pathetic!

I was disappointed by the way the fast bowlers were to the tail. I am tired of seeing India habitually fail to clean up the tail quickly. I still don’t understand the logic of bowling wide with a neon lit ‘come hit me, spank me, abuse me’ banner on the ball, hoping that the tail will nick it to the slips. A score which should have folded within 300 is now ticking on to a healthy competitive score… they might even end with a 350.

Looking at the day’s play, it might give the impression that India has Australia on the mat. Nope, it was an even day for both teams. Australia scored in excess of 300 in a single day’s play!! And that’s incredible!! They bumbled it because it could have easily been a 550 plus score for the first innings. India did remarkably well to restrict the best batting line-up in test cricket ever to this score. But this total is competitive by all means and India now has the challenge of playing on this puzzling pitch and put up a good response… by no means it’s gonna be easy. They better be working out on a tread mill during the night, because they have a hell-of-a-lot of running to do, with no short boundaries that they are lazily accustomed to and a natural game plan of dealing only in boundaries.

High points of the day:

Phil Jacques’s consistent good run at the top, shows that Australia will continue not to have any problems in the opening department since the depart of the earlier opening greats. Whereas it will continue to remain a puzzle for India, ten years now running!

India does have a bowling attack that can pick 20 wickets.

Mathew Hayden continues to bully India