Sriram, Martin make England toil in the sun
Anand Vasu - 23 November 2001
To say the final session of the day bore no joy for the visitors would
be an understatement worthy of the English, the supposed original
masters of the art. Two cricketers who are more than used to setting
up stalls and batting out over after over did exactly that, with
Sridharan Sriram accumulating 120 and Jacob Martin helping himself to
83, as the Indian Board President's XI replied to the England total of
320 with 256/2 at the end of the second day's play.
The bowling charts make very poor reading if you are an England fan.
The most experienced specialist fast bowler, Matthew Hoggard, returned
figures of 17-3-34-1. The others were not far behind, with only Martyn
Ball picking up a wicket. James Ormond, Craig White and Richard Dawson
toiled hard without reward, giving away 139 runs between them off 43
overs.
England, however, have no real need to lose heart at the proceedings
of the second day. Posting 320, they did their bit in putting the
match out of reach of a Board President's XI victory. On seeing this,
Martin used the day to send out signals to the selectors. One thought
the two-day affair at Mumbai was rendered useless by its limited time.
The story was pretty much the same at Hyderabad.
Sridharan Sriram is a grafter at the best of times. In essence more of
a left-arm spinner than a batsman, the left-hander was recently pitch-
forked into the opening slot. Whenever there was width to the
delivery, Sriram was quick to open the face of the bat and guide the
ball to the third man area. The full delivery on the pads was not
spared either, repeatedly being tickled away to the vacant fine-leg
region. But it was not the strokes he played, but the lack of them
that singled out his innings.
Defending solidly when the ball threatened the wickets, Sriram gave
away little to the bowlers. Spending the whole day out in the middle,
he saw off 236 balls in his innings of 120. On 14 occasions, he
managed to find the fence. Whether this innings will once more put him
in the limelight and prod the selectors into picking him remains to be
seen.
The day however, did not belong solely to Sriram. Skipper Martin
impressed with his approach to batting. Unlike Dinesh Mongia (44), who
flattered to deceive, Martin stuck to his task admirably. Driving
through the covers with aplomb, he forced the bowlers to change their
length a touch and made them bowl to his strength. With that achieved,
the ball disappeared through the mid-wicket region regularly off
booming pulls. 83 runs resulted, dotted with 10 boundaries.
The pairing of Sriram and Martin rubbed salt in the wounds of the
English, accelerating just a touch towards the end of the day. With
English shoulders dropping, Sriram and Martin went in for the kill,
piling up 190 runs for the third wicket. The worrying thing from the
English point of view is that they could not control the tempo of the
game against a pair of defensive batsmen. What then will be their
answer to the attacking cricket that the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and
VVS Laxman will dish out?
Unfortunately for the visitors, things are not going to get any easier
as the tour progresses. Their best bet, as Nasser Hussain put it, was
to stay in the game as long as possible and wait for the hosts to feel
the pressure. The way things are unfolding, you could excuse the
England captain for thinking that this might never happen.
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