Port Elizabeth Test, Day 3, Tea
Sunday, November 18, 2001

Sourav Ganguly has given his detractors an excellent opportunity to call for him to be stripped of the captaincy with a move that made no sense or logic at all – a decision that no captain at any level of the game should ever have made. Javagal Srinath should have been brought into the attack for an over or two before lunch, but that did not happen. Worse still, India's best bowler was not summoned back into the attack till more than 30 minutes after lunch. Now that's a blunder, and how an international captain could have missed such a basic move is beyond my comprehension.

The fact that Srinath did not come on straight after lunch has helped the South African recovery. And as things stand, they look to have enough runs on the board. If India start to get the feeling that they are out of the game, then the runs will come even more easily. India will go into the third session with their backs to the wall.

Ajit Agarkar does not have enough natural ability in him to be a world-class fast bowler, but he has the kind of spirit worthy of admiration. Whenever he was given the ball he tried to make things happen.

Harbhajan Singh, for a while, bowled the desired line outside the off stump, but then he showed a reluctance to bowl that line. I think he needs to learn a lot from Muttiah Muralitharan. In Test matches, Murali bowls an off-stump line to increase his chances of getting a wicket, unlike Harbhajan who bowls around the middle stump.

But this session will be remembered for the grave tactical error of the Indian captain.

Sanjay Manjrekar, mainstay of the Indian batting in the late '80s and early '90s, was talking to H Natarajan

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