Nagpur Test, Day 1, Tea
Thursday, February 21, 2002

A commendable comeback by India in this session. When things looked rather bleak, they were gifted an opening by Alistair Campbell. The dismissal was quite interesting. The delivery from Kumble was flighted and well pitched up and Campbell, in trying to hard to middle the ball, leant back a touch. The drive stayed airborne just long enough for VVS Laxman to take a good catch. Once Zimbabwe offered India that opportunity, they grabbed it.

The performance would have pleased John Wright and Sourav Ganguly immensely. The heat really picked up in this session and in spite of that, the fast bowlers were the ones really troubling the batsmen. Both Zaheer Khan and Javagal Srinath bowled with some fire and more importantly, they got some reverse swing. These were ideal conditions for reverse swing with the pitch being so dry that the ball got roughed up quickly. Zaheer bowled the right length and the delivery that got Andy Flower was just sensational.

Getting Flower was almost like getting half the side out. The Indians went after him from the start, banishing from their minds memories of what he had done to them in the last series here. Ganguly was very aggressive with his fields and Zaheer responded by going after Flower.

It was a very good period of cricket from the Indians and Srinath responded to Zaheer's prompting by bowling a bouncer to get rid of Gavin Rennie. Even though they had no assistance from the pitch, the Indians stormed back in this session and set us up nicely for what should be a fascinating final two hours.

Sanjay Manjrekar, stalwart of the Indian batting in the early 90s, was talking to Dileep Premachandran.

More Sanjay Manjrekar
Day 1, Lunch: 'Sehwag unlucky to be dropped'

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