India loses four crucial wickets at lunch

Dec 08:  In the final Test match at M Chinnaswami stadium in Bangalore, India was on the back foot after loosing early 4 top wickets including both opener and former Indian skipper Rahul Dravid and veteran VVS Laxman for only 61 runs. The teams of India and Pakistan both are suffering from the injuries and playing with mega replacements. India was 65/4 in 24 overs till lunch. Saurav Ganguly was on 12 runs while Yuvraj Singh has yet to open the account.

India won the toss and elected to bat first, but Indian skipper Anil Kumble’s decision of batting first seems proving wrong as Indian opener Wasim Jaffar and Gautam Gambhir (who is playing first time in this series) along with Rahul Dravid had been left the ground when score board was showing only 51 runs on the board. Gautam Gamhir was the first batsman to go to pavilion when he was caught behind by Kamran Akmal on Muhammad Sami’s delivery after contributing mere 5 individual runs when India scored 8 runs in 7.4 overs.

Rahul Dravid, who is under BCCI’s scanner for the forthcoming Australia’s tour could not justified his renowned name of being ‘Great wall of India’, and had been caught in the ground by Misbah-ul-Haq on the Yaseer Arafat’s delivery. He scored only 19 runs in 28 balls (3*4) before his dismissal and the total score of India was only 44 runs.

Wasim Jaffer, who had made double ton in the first innings of the second test match in Kolkata has also been out through lbw on Arafat’s delivery, when he contributed 17 runs while India’s score was only 51 runs in 18.3 overs.

VVS Laxman could also not be able to sustain his form after hitting marvellous century in Kolkata test and bowled out on Hamid’s swing delivery. He added only 5 individual runs in Indian scorecard while India was struggling to make any remarkable knock in the absence of legendary Sachin Tendulkar and ODI captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

The absence of both these run machines and medium pacer Zaheer Khan may be cause of worry for Indian test skipper Anil Kumble, who was playing in the home ground. The record of India in this ground is also not very impressive as India has played 16 test matches here out of which it won only four and lost 6 matches while remaining were tied.

In terms of Pakistan, India had fought four times to Pak before but could not succeed to make any victory while Pak won the two matches here and be able to draw rest of two.

India has made four changes in its team. Irfan Pathan and Ishant Sharma have been replaced for Zaheer Khan and Munaf Patel while Sachin Tendulakar and M S Dhoni have been replaced by Gautam Gabhir and Yuvraj Singh. Dinesh Karthik is playing as a middle-order batsman and wicket-keeper. On the other hand, Pakistani tour captain Shoaib Malik is yet again not playing in this test due to injuries and Younis Khan is the acting captain for this match. Here is the list of both squad:

India: Wasim Jaffer, Gautam Gambhir, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman, Yuvraj Singh, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Irfan Pathan, Anil Kumble (capt), Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma

Pakistan: Salman Butt, Yasir Hameed, Younis Khan (capt), Mohammad Yousuf, Faisal Iqbal, Misbah-ul-Haq, Kamran Akmal (wk), Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Sami, Yasir Arafat, Danish Kaneria