Surprising that Sehwag had never heard of Roy, Mankad

This Lahore wicket managed to deaden even Shoaib Akhtar’s intentions and the man tipped to rattle the foundations of the Indian batting ruefully gave away to the very determined Sehwag and Dravid. They gave a fitting reply full of discipline and character, qualities that have so often deserted India in the past. Yet, it will take more than one performance to convince some of us that the batting will continue to flourish when faced with such odds.

Meanwhile, Inzamam could have considered adding another deep third man and tempted Sehwag into playing his favourite airy deflections wide and high outside the off stump. Maybe he could have put in a short fine leg and got Shoaib to dig the ball in on the middle and leg. Pakistan could have tried a lot of things but I doubt if they would have worked.

By the end of the fourth day a thousand runs had been scored for the loss of seven wickets and along with the pitch, the match had also been put to sleep. If the last three days have announced Sehwag’s return to form, they have also aggravated Dravid’s problems.

He is not an opener, nor for that matter is he a wicket-keeper, but he has been required to take on both  responsibilities solely to free a place in the middle order. As long as Ganguly was captain (at least in the last 18 months or so) the contenders for the solitary slot was either Mohd Kaif and Yuvraj Singh. Since Kaif had lost his place and Ganguly the captaincy, it has become a fight between the latter and Yuvraj.

The day of reckoning has been postponed, by Dravid’s decision to open and a pitch that has made a mockery of a match.

Dravid has dealt honestly and so, admirably with his first major test as captain of India, whose problems really have been single-dimensional. What he does at Faisalabad will give further insight into the workings of a captain who I imagine is here to stay for a while. With the weather closing in on the fifth day the umpires offered an opportunity to Dravid to break a 50-year-old world record but Sehwag seemed to have lost interest. A shame since Vinoo bhai and Pankaj da, had they been with us, would have certainly appreciated this marathon effort.

The fact that Dravid was unaware on the fourth day of exactly how close he was to it is, I suppose, a little suprising but that Sehwag had never heard of Pankaj Roy (India’s first captain from Bengal) or Mankad, an all-rounder in the same league as Kapil Dev, is very disconcerting. I can only hope that it is an example of some obscure humour.

But if this is true then are we to assume that today’s cricketers are so ill-informed and uninterested in the traditions, and history of the game. If that is so, Chappell had better introduce another element into their daily regimen of practice and push-ups.