The Pitch that wasn't to be

Before the start of the game everyone was of an opinion that, this pitch was going to red hot and Australians in particular were licking their lips at the prospect of Bret Lee and Shaun Tait having a go at the Indians. It wasn't to be, although this pitch had more pace and bounce compared to the ones in Sydney and Melbourne, it was not all that alarming or was the Indian batting line up as weak as the black caps one, who were annihilated by the pace of Lee and Tait in the 20-20 match they played here in WACA last year.

Sehwag and Jaffer set the tone early in the innings with a quick 50 run partnership before Lee found his mojo after changing ends to take out jaffer, who once again was found wanting with minimal foot work. Sehwag as is his wont, after doing all the hard work fell for a nothing short under edging one to Gilli of Johnson's bowling. Sachin and Dravid then set about to build on the opening stand in contrasting ways with Sachin doing the bulk of the scoring in the first half of the partnership through some upper cuts and well judged running between the wickets, Dravid started slow but a brilliant cover drive of Johnson was all it needed for him to grow into confidence and score freely. The 138-run partnership was broken when Lee had Sachin adjudged leg before, a dubious decision with the ball comfortably going over the stumps. Ganguly departed soon playing away from his body, VVS and Dravid threw their wickets away with some shoddy shot selection. Dhoni along with Pathan faught hard to deny Australia the initiative but it was only a matter of time before he has back in hutch and that opened up the floodgates as India lost the last four wickets for two runs. If some one had told me that India would make 330 on this wicket before the start of the match, I would have taken it happily after watching them play all these years on fast bouncy wickets. Bret Lee was again by far the best bowler in this innings and Clark was as usual parsimonious. Johnson was good in patches but over all ineffective but it was Shaun Tait who let his side down with a listless performance, he neither had control or the pace to pose questions to the batsmen.

Australia were in new charters as far as their batting line is concerned with two relatively inexperienced batsmen first up and boy would they have to liked to have Matthew Hayden in the line up, as both the left handers were found wanting in face of some brilliant swing bowling from Irfan Pathan though Chris rogers was a tad unlucky to be give out LBW. Soon RP joined the party by having Hussey caught behind for a duck, first one for Hussey and not a bad time to get one as far as the Indians were concerned. Ishant Sharma then showed why he is rated so high in the domestic circles by taking out Pointing and Clarke with similar deliveries, I am very much impressed by this lad and should say am pretty excited to see how his career pans out.Symonds and Gillchrist played some fantastic cricket before Kumble had Symonds caught at slip, for a well played 66. That wicket being Kumble's 600'th test wicket, which deserves a post by itself to grace the occasion. Gilli fell to a jaffa from RP, the end was swift after that with RP polishing of lee and clark before Kumble accounted for Tait. Aussie innings folded up for a below par score of 212 and India now have a very handy lead of 118 runs, which puts them right in the driving seat.

The story so far in this test match has been how an inexperienced Indian bowling attack out bowled the Australian attack, and it again proves that Australia are not comfortable playing the swinging ball, 2005' Ashes anyone? Pathan and RP were very impressive with the new ball, not only getting the ball to swing but also putting it in the right areas, which would have made Wasim Akram proud, who was watching them bowl from the commentary box. Just hope India doesn't go into a defensive mode and do something silly in the second innings like they did in the last test match they played against SA for they won't get a better chance than this to put one across the Aussies