Now India has history to fight at Karachi

Well my earlier post said "Will India beat the odds at Karachi". Now India has even more difficult task at their hands. They will not be pitted against Shoaib Akhtar Co and "Odds" but also History. Even if they manage a draw they will be creating history at Karachi National Stadium. If they go on to win this match the odds of which are just odds..they will be writing the history from scratch and will break numerous records.

But if you look closer the first thought that strikes my mind is if Pakistan can do it why not India. First innings were the only innings in the series when India came out behind Pakistan in terms of runs scored and that too just 7 runs. Looking at individual batsman in Indian team I think nobody should be more desperate than the Sehwags, Tendulkars and Gangulys to make a point.

Virender Sehwag would like to make atleast another 100 to prove he can score all sorts of wickets especially after being challenged by Inzamam. Dravid might have scored 2 hundreds in the series but if India wants to save this test it will definitely require the "Wall" to be there for better part of 2 days. Also he would like to justify his decision of winning the toss and batting first which he had never tried in the past. Tendulkar has a lot more at stake as he hardly has any runs from the series and some of the critics already calling it the starting of end of an era. Nobody probably knows the importance of this innings more than Saurav Ganguly does. If he succeeds in this match he will silence his critics for once and for all. He missed it in the first innings and would definitely like to amend it in the second. Well if he can do it that means Yuvraj needs to put even better score to fight for the middle order slot in the tests.

With so much pride at stake and being an optimist I feel India will come out on the fourth and fifth days not only trying to save the test but giving it a long shot of winning it.

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Will India beat the odds at Karachi

Historically National stadium at Karachi is probably one of the best hunting grounds for Pakistan. Of all the 37 test matches played at Karachi, Pakistan has lost just One. The only lost test was the one between Pakistan and England in 2000-01 which England won by 6 wickets in the end.

However of the all the matches in the past only 2 have been played in January and both of them ended in Draw. But their have been 4 tests in February of which Pakistan has won 2 and 2 have ended in a draw.India played 2 matches at the same ground in the months of Jan-Feb in the past and both of them have been draw.

Another interesting fact which will play on the mind of Captains will be of the 20 matches which had results the team batting first have won just 3 matches where as 17 matches have been won with team batting second. On the contrary 30 times Captains winning the toss have batted first knowing that the chances of teams batting first winning the match at Karachi are very low.

Going by this it will be interesting to see what the winning Captain decides on. Besides the history a lot will also depend on if Inzamam plays at Karachi or not. Since he has scored at about just over 70 runs/inning at Karachi.

On the Indian side it will interesting to see if Dravid plays with 4 or 5 specialist bowlers. With all of these let's hope the last match provides us with the some interesting and fair contest between bat and ball.

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Death of test cricket

I was just thinking how much I was excited at the prospect of seeing an India Pak contest. Especially after 2 very closely fought series in the past. But after 2 tests the excitement has pretty much vanished and that too without a trace.

I think normally the most talked about things in a series are normally some superb batting displays, some amazing bowling performances and some superb catches. But till now what I have heard is just some pitch talk, Curators talk and lots of batting records getting shattered. It would be interesting to see how much the top 5 batsman from each side improved their Batting avgs or for that matter how much good Bhajji and Shoaib feel better as a batsman. May be a few of them might end up asking their Captains to bat higher in the order and would ask Younis Khan and Dravid to bowl a couple of overs to make them feel how much beating these guys have taken.

I think the only thing the first 2 tests have achieved for the 2 teams is some bruised ego for Bhajjis and Shoaibs. Looking at the amount of beating the bowlers have taken I think the bowlers should be allowed to take off these statistics from their records. Atleast they will have the consolation of not messing their records at the end of these 2 matches.

My personal suggestion is to make this series a 1 test series(Karachi) and take the rest of them out of any type of records. If not anything else atleast it will also save a lot of work for statisticians.

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Will India Win this Match?

Ind Vs Pak 2nd Test End of Day 4 Jan 2006 Faislabad

This will be the question in the mind of some of the Indian fans when the play start on Day 5. I know this is not going to be an easy task especially when you have seen that it took 4 entire days for the teams to get out once. But then if a few things happen the way I want them to happen India can still win this match.

First thing needs to happen is Younis Khan needs to get out early. Looking at Pak minus 2 batsman(especially Inzy), India have some chances on getting Pak out in the next 40 overs. 40 Overs will probably mean another 120-150 runs. What that means is India will need to score about 275 runs in 50 overs. On a pitch like this with Sehwag and Dhoni blazing India can have an outside chance of winning this match.

In the end however if Younis khan and Akmal plays well all chances of having a result might go down the drains and we will be stuck with another boring day of batting with bowlers taking another beating. But if a little wishful thinking can change the course of the match, I still think India has an outside chance of winning this match.

Report Day 4

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Ind vs Pak 2nd Test End of Day3

The 2 tests till now have been pretty one sided affairs, except for the a little chance which pakistan had on day 3 which they lost with some excellent hitting by Dhoni and some very good support by Pathan.

I personally felt Dravid made a correct decision by including 5 fulltime bowlers. That was infact proved correct both by R P Singh as well as Zaheer Khan. However I was not expecting Dravid and Laxman to bat at an avg which is below 3/over. Had they been more positive I feel India had a lot better chances of winning this match. I still feel if Dhoni and Pathan can make some quick runs and India makes another 200 runs in 40 more overs, match is going to become really interesting.

I was just looking at some of the betting sites ;-) and found odds more in favor of India than Pakistan which is an interesting perception. How many runs Dhoni and Pathan make is still in the future but with both Inzy and Shoaib Malik being injured there is a remote possibility that Dravid can think of an early declaration and then get Pakistan out. I know it's a lot of wishful thinking but things can change fast in Cricket.

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India vs Pak 2nd Test Faislabad, Pakistan

Second test between India and Pak starts today. There are couple of very interesting things to follow once the test starts.

First most important thing will be if the pitch is going to be the same as the one we saw in Lahore. Going by the past records with more than 50% of the matches being drawn at Faislabad it's quite possible that this one ends in a draw. Even if it's a draw hopefully it turns out to be an interesting one to watch for.

One of the other things to see is if Ganguly still plays for India. That will be a pretty interesting thing to follow. On one hand India no longer needs him as an opener on the other hand Dravid playing as opener had provided India another choice to make from. Although India has lot more openers that what they would have asked for ;-) the problem still remains the same. May be Dravid now having more confidence in his opening pair and rest of the middle order might want another bowler to be added. If that happens, RP Singh has the best chances of being included ahead of Zaheer Khan.

Going by the Lahore test it might be Dravid who might be opening with Sehwag and then the rest of the middle order to follow. Only danger might be if India excludes Ganguly, the batsman coming after Tendulkar doesn't have much Test experience and entire responsibily will fall upon Dravid, Sehwag, Laxman, Tendulkar which can be risky considering there is just one match left after this.

Also interesting will be to see is how Pakistan works on containing Sehwag. With all these things to watch out for I feel 2nd test is going to be a pretty interesting contest provided Weather doesn't play a spoilsport.

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