Delhi Test, Day 2, Tea
Friday, March 1, 2002

An interesting session, and it was heartening to see Zimbabwe show some real spirit. After posting a total of 329, the bowlers bowled quite aggressively with the new ball. At Nagpur, they bowled just line and length, but here they used the short delivery effectively.

SS Das was done in by the slow nature of the pitch. Shot making is never easy when the balls stops on you and the shot that Das played was indicative of that. Zimbabwe blotted the copybook at the end of the session by giving Sourav Ganguly some easy runs, with Brighton Watambwa in particular trying to bounce him out.

The Australians had used the short-pitched delivery quite beautifully against Ganguly. They threatened him with it, while using it very sparingly. Most of the time, they kept the ball pitched up outside the off stump and Ganguly, in his present form and state of mind, is apprehensive in that area. Zimbabwe needed to adopt similar tactics but their inexperience showed.

I also felt sad for Deep Dasgupta. He's a young cricketer who works tremendously hard and has performed far above expectation with his batting. With the keeping gloves, he's not naturally gifted and that's shown in this match. The manner of his dismissal today left him disconsolate and you had to feel sympathy for him as he trudged back. It's been a hard test so far for him.

Sanjay Manjrekar, mainstay of the Indian batting in the early 1990s, was talking to Dileep Premachandran.

More Sanjay Manjrekar
Day 2, Lunch: 'Get your tails out, India'

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