Blogs What should England do to save the match ?
August 11th, 2007 by marauder326/9 and just a wicket standing in the first innings. Things arent’ looking ominous if you are an English fan. Trailing India by 338 more runs. A really big daunting task ahead.
There should be no doubts in Rahul’s mind but to just ask the England team to follow on. If he thinks otherwise, then he is probably giving England a better chance to draw the test match, which i am sure will never happen. Assuming England gets bundled out for 330 tomorrow. This gives them atleast 180 overs to bat on to draw the test match and salvage some pride. Nothing is impossible in cricket, and if the England batsman apply themselves they can probably stage a fightback. Ofcourse rains can chip in with their help. But what one can never deny is, England might always have this feeling of an outside chance of winning this test match to somehow deny India a series victory. This might sound very funny to anyone hearing, but deep down inside Vaughan’s heart i am sure he will have this feeling running over.
To me, Strauss , Vaughan and Peterson are the key players. They have gotta play it session by session. The key here is not to get too defensive. They still have to punish the bad balls and that is the best possible way to keep the scoreboard ticking and some runs behind to give them the much needed confidence. Zaheer should be the lethal weapon they should confront with. It is no easy task. If England can manage to end tomorrow with a max of 4 wickets down and around say 250 on the board. This should possibly mean they trial India by 85 odd runs.
Final day with wickets in hand they can probably accelerate a little and by the end of the second session declare at around 500. This would mean India require 160 odd runs to win from the remaining 30 overs or soo. Indians might give it a calculative shot chasing, but hold back if they lose wickets. Well if things go for England as i optimistically predict, we are in for an exciting test match finish. But i am pretty sure this can happen in one’s wildest dreams. But if this happens, its gotta go down as one of the best fightbacks in the history of test cricket. Lets see how it goes !!
August 11th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
I agree with almost everything you have said marauder, except that the best fight-back in the history of Cricket has already happened, in 2001, in Calcutta where India beat the mighty Australians after being asked to follow-on. The heroes were Dravid, Laxman, Harbhajan and last but not the least Tendulkar by taking a few wickets with his leg-spinner-googly (just like he did today when he knocked off the most dangerous KP).