An Emphatic Indian Win !!!

Yes you all got it right, I am writing here about yesterday's Indian victory in a test match against Australia at Mohali.

I was reading about the scores in the previous practice match vs board XI and was upset to see the performance of our side and decided not to watch any of the tests. On that note I missed the first day of the test match and heard from a friend that Aussies were some 250 odd runs for 5. I was bit happy but then started thinking may be there is a problem with the pitch. A splendid inning by Shane Watson the lone century maker in this test. I am sure he love India as his resuruction from the ruins happened here in IPL season 1 from RR team. After the first day I could catch few glimpses of the postlunch and post tea session. A balance knock from Paine made sure that Aussis could cross 400 mark and Indians were under pressure.

Who can be the man than Mr. Viru for these situations ? The quality I like and hate sometimes in him is the no regards to the pressure. He will try to punish most of the balls. A blazing half century provided a solid foundation to Indian total. Night Watchman Ishant Sharma showed a good defencive technique to last for more than hour to score 10. The great wall of India on the other hand was solid as always. In came the GOD of Cricket Mr. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar and with his arrival at the crease you could hear crowd going wild generally what is observed when a batsman reaches a ton! That is the persona Sachin has on the Indian well actually global crowd. The partnership between these two veterans made sure that India was back on track. Later Raina, a real finding for Indian cricket managed to score 86. Tendulkar once again perished in the 90's scoring a mamouth 98 runs on mind you a tough wicket by then. With that Indians could score 400 runs and the Aussies could get 20+ run lead. The only missing part was the nemesis of Australian team, VVS Laxman but who knew at that point of time that one can not keep Laxman away from scoring in a match against the Australians !!!

Australian second inning despite a good start from Katich and Watson could only manage 198 runs because of some firy balling from Ishant and support from Indian spinners. This gave a very good opportunity to the hosts to clinch the 1-0 advantage in the series.

I was travelling on the that day and could get only the info from calls from my brother. One such call came telling me India 48/3. I was furious on Indian batting line blaming all the way to them till my destination. Day ended with 50/4 India, requiring 170 or so runs to win with 6 wickets in hand. The fifth and final day saw a good start to Indian batting with Sachin providing some resistance to the attack. Once he got out, it was all over for India, thought almost all of us. Laxman, the superhero against Aussies and Ishant who showed some resistance in 1st innings were the warriors protecting the 10th Indian wicket with 100 runs required. Despite his injury, the weared out pitch, the old spinning ball, confusion of runner and the Australian tactics, the Very Very Special superhuman made sure that the game will not drift away to the aussis. Showing enough confidence over young Ishant where they put a solid 70 run partnership, they proved that its really tough to beat India on the home gound no matter the odds. I liked the efforts Ishant put in his defencive technique and one of his shots the cover drive that he played could have made an opening top order batsman feel proud.

You could see a pin drop silence because of the pressure on the crowd buy as soon as Ojha scored that last 2 runs off his legs, the crowd was on their feet. I have never seen an emotional Sachin but he came running to the batsmen in the centre and hugged them with great passion, respect, pride and joy. All the team was rejoicing with the success they got and in such a close game. This showed the mental toughness of the side along with skillset the posess. With this India took a commading 1-0 lead in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy !!!