Ahmedabad, November 20: Gautam Gambhir and a dead Ahmedabad pitch took Sri Lanka’s dream of a first Test win in India a session closer to its death.
Gambhir played out 93 deliveries for 31 runs in the first session, looking entirely at home in the role of saving a Test, going through score-less spells, and not letting it affect his mind.
Four of his seven centuries – and all of his last three – have now come in the second innings, two of them in match-saving scenarios. He now averages 62.52 in the second innings, as opposed to a 55.27 overall.
Sri Lanka were not helped by the hamstring injury to Dammika Prasad, who didn’t bowl today, and Muttiah Muralitharan’s ineffectiveness: he is yet to take a wicket in 22 second-innings overs. Their problems on the unhelpful pitch were summed up by how Amit Mishra, nightwatchman from yesterday, got to his personal best score and frustrated them for 26 deliveries on the fifth morning. The only time when he looked like getting out was when a low, dying offering from him was dropped by Tillakaratne Dilshan at second slip. Nine overs later, when Mishra did get out, it was to a freak catch by Dilshan off a proper flick shot, low to his right, at leg gully.
Gambhir, at the other end, was in his Napier-like mode from earlier this year, when he batted 643 minutes for 137 runs to save the Test. Even today, he was not interested in scoring, or in other words he didn’t let being stuck at one end bother him much. Angelo Mathews bowled well in Prasad’s absence, hitting good lengths consistently, getting some of them to stay low and getting the odd one to seam away off the rare crack on the pitch. But Gambhir took most of the strike to him, playing 30 consecutive balls from Mathews for no run in the first hour, good in his judgement outside off, and coming forward to straighter deliveries to negate the odd shooter.
Against spinners, Gambhir preferred to stay back, or jump out of the track and get close enough to the delivery. Sri Lanka came close twice, once when he left a Mathews delivery that jagged back in, and once when he pulled a delivery that kept low. The Murali pull fetched Gambhir a single – while running he kept admonishing himself – and he later reverted to playing shots.
He did pull out the big hits in the 90s, as he is used to doing because he prefers to get the 90s done with quickly. He took 61 deliveries to move from overnight 74 to 90, but then hit three boundaries in six balls to reach his century quickly. And then scored two runs in 25 deliveries. The approach in the 90s was similar to that in Napier, when he stepped out and lofted Daniel Vettori and Jeetan Patel for fours in consecutive overs.
Sachin Tendulkar started off fluently, driving Murali against the spin for two boundaries, and punching Mathews for one, and once he got comfortable in the middle he too opted to play for time, and at lunch a result from the match looked improbable.
—–Agencies