Watch free streaming cricket video highlights from the second day of the Perth 3rd Test Match – India versus Australia played on January 17, 2007.
A fantastic day of cricket with the Indian second innings commencing by the end of the Day 2. The morning session saw seven wickets falling. Indian batsmen M S Dhoni and Irfan Pathan stuck it out for about an hour, but once again poor umpiring by umpire Asad Rauf saw Dhoni being given out to a ball that was too high – much like Sachin Tendulkar’s dismissal yesterday. In yesterday’s review I tried to downplay the umpiring faux pas, but as every Australian has been saying – unless the ball is really full at the WACA Perth, you don’t give LBWs here. In fact, the last time India were here, none of the 33 dismissals in the test match were LBW or bowled. What’s frustrating is that, like we saw in Sydney, a bad umpiring decision often has drastic results and the Indian innings folded up within 2 runs. Australia were at the receiving end of another Asad Rauf umpiring mistake when he gave debutant Chris Rogers out to a ball that was going down leg.
Sensational swing bowling by Irfan Pathan and R P Singh followed supported by Ishanth Sharma who used his height and the Perth wicket to get some good bounce and Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke. The fantastic day of cricket continued with Andrew Symonds and Adam Gilchrist playing some superb counter attacking cricket with a lot of straight drives to the swinging pitched up deliveries. Incidentally, Symonds was dropped very early by Tendulkar and had moody Lady Luck seduced by his braids on a couple of other occasions. But it was Adam Gilchrist’s innings that brought back memories of 2001 where he helped Australia to their 16th consecutive test match win. Watch that innings here. Kumble after being hit around by Symonds got him eventually. Symonds hung around – after Sydney, you never know with these umpires.
Quite an amazing performance by the Indians in this test match starting with their decision to bat first. Before the tour had begun, even the most hardcore Indian cricket fan had shrugged away the Perth test match to the Australians. If India bats well tomorrow, it's déjà vu time all over again cos it’s gonna be India once again stopping the Australians from going for a record consecutive 17 test match wins. Watch the last time this happened here.
Virender Sehwag looked a step closer to being the Butcher of Najafgarh in the short second innings. There are two good things in this test match. Finally, Sehwag and Irfan Pathan have made it to the team. The selectors and Captain in India and more importantly cricket public need to take a little more risk with Indian cricket. Ok, Jaffer played well before the tour, but you could just see that he was not going to do well in Australia. Though an intimidating decision, Sehwag should have been straight away picked out of the wilderness for the simple reason that we have seen him in the past score with ease where even the best in his team are circumspect. Even a 20 or 30 by him at the top is worth more than a Jaffer 50 because of the mind warp bowlers are sent into.
A day also of landmarks which you can watch in this highlights video package. Mike Hussey got out for a duck for the first time in his test career. India’s Anil Kumble got to 600 wickets – that was the Andrew Symonds dismissal. South Africa’s AB de Villiers was the person to beat, but it didn’t happen today. Rahul Dravid now has the third highest number of catches in test cricket history. This is an aspect of Dravid that is often understated. We all know of Mark Taylor, but Dravid in the slips has also been awesome for India. Caught Dravid bowled Kumble. How come we don’t hear enough about that.
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