Ahmedabad Test, Day 4, Tea
Friday, December 14, 2001

The afternoon session would have been one of the toughest sessions as captain for Sourav Ganguly. He had been going through a lean trot in Tests, the team was doing badly in a match in which they were expected to dominate, and to top it all, he dropped a catch and looked woeful on the field.

Going into the fourth, India needed to put up an inspired performance, and the captain would have been expected to lead from the front. However, his performance has been quite embarrassing, and it'll be tough for him to ask for more from his team-mates when he himself hasn't looked the part. His morale, and that of the team, would not exactly be sky-high at tea. Harbhajan Singh may have salvaged the situation a little by taking three wickets, but England already have enough runs on the board to dictate terms in the final session.

Mark Butcher played one of the better innings seen in this series, primarily because he looked solid in defence. The confidence in his defensive technique allowed him to wait for the bad ball to put away for runs, rather than desperately trying to score off good deliveries. Butcher joins Marcus Trescothick, Craig White and Nasser Hussain as batsmen who have got among the runs in the Tests here. It augers well for the third Test in Bangalore.

The three wickets that Harbhajan picked should do a lot of good to his confidence. His performance hasn't been as impressive as one would have expected, and while he took some wickets today, he still didn't bowl as well as he can.

Sanjay Manjrekar, mainstay of the Indian batting in the late '80s and early '90s, was talking to S Rajesh.

More Sanjay Manjrekar
Day 4, Lunch: India lacked common sense

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