New Delhi, January 17: Put in under overcast skies, India got through the first session safely, but not without slight early bother caused by the ball not quite coming on. Yet Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir got enough loose deliveries to score at 4.84 an over in a session that was reduced to an hour after a 90-minute delay because of fog and murky light.
In the first five overs, Sehwag got three inside edges because he was too early into the shots. He also got one edge to fly over gully and also hit two boundaries. With Gambhir, though, Bangladesh’s bowlers didn’t get their lines right. Neither the debutant Shafiul Islam nor Rubel Hossain made him play early on. He was made to play at only two of the first 10 balls he faced, the second one going uppishly through the covers. The next ball Gambhir played at was a flick off the pads for four, and he was away.
In an acknowledgment to the ball holding on to the surface, Sehwag was more circumspect than usual, making an extra effort to get behind the line as opposed to beside it. It isn’t to say that balls too full or too short were spared, because Sehwag’s strike-rate of 92.68 clearly suggests otherwise.
Once in, the batsmen’s biggest test came through their own indecisive calling: on three different occasions Sehwag was left rushing back into his crease. In the ninth over of the innings, Shafiul – bowling from around the stumps – troubled Gambhir with two deliveries that held their line. Sehwag played five deliveries of Shafiul’s next over.
Although Sehwag stepped out and smashed Shakib Al Hasan’s first ball for four past cover, there was turn on offer, albeit slow. In the last over before lunch, Mahmudullah got an offbreak to grip at Sehwag, but the bat-pad flew wide of forward short leg.
——-Agencies