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India fight back on day two of Mohali Test

India at stumps, 115/0 in 50 overs, Ramesh batting 58, Gandhi batting 52, still 17 behind on the first innings

Day two was a complete contrast to day one of the Mohali Test. After a shaky start, the Indians picked it up with the ball and in the field, and powered by hostile spells by Srinath on either side of lunch, took out the last 7 Kiwi batsmen for the addition of just 96 runs. The Indian openers then settled down to the job of grinding the New Zealand attack, playing with unlooked-for patience to chip away at the Kiwi lead, and take India through to the stumps in a dominant position.

The first two hours of play could be neatly divided into two distinct phases -- 45 minutes of complete absence of thought by the Indians, followed by an hour and 15 when they began putting the pieces back together again.

New Zealand resumed on 119/3, and India's best bet was to utilise the early morning conditions -- anyone who knows the Mohali ground will tell you that the first hour of play is the best time of the day for seam bowlers -- to try and pin the Kiwis back.

That would seem to indicate that you open with Javagal Srinath, easily your best seamer. Instead, the ball was tossed to Venkatesh Prasad and Anil Kumble. While on the latter, I suppose a day might come when Indian captains, faced with two alternatives -- the first being to think, the second being to give Kumble the ball irrespective -- stop opting for the latter.

For nine hours, madness reigned. Prasad pitched repeatedly short and was pulled to ribbons by Astle, who played aggressor while at the other end captain Stephen Fleming seemed intent on anchoring the side to a big score. This contrasted with the Kiwi bowling performance of the first morning -- if there was one thing they did well, it was to keep every single ball right up, and make the batsmen play. Interestingly, and by way of sidelight, this is one reason why the India A team players, and other leading domestic performers, rate Mohanty so highly -- they point to the fact that in the last couple of seasons, the medium pacer has learnt to pitch right up, make the batsman play every single ball, and thus increased his own chances of striking.

Prasad's first spell of the morning goes for 4-1-20-0.

Kumble, meanwhile, gets a field of slip, silly point and a short square, the last named there for the push at a googly to get the bat-pad on the leg side -- and consistently bowls flippers drifting onto the batsman's pads, to be taken for runs through square and fine leg.

Prasad goes for 4-1-20-0 before being replaced, in the tenth over of the morning, by Srinath. Kumble, who gets two overs more than Prasad, turns in 6-0-24-0.

In his first over, ball three, Srinath produced one that swung in on line of off and middle, straightened to hold its line, beat Fleming for pace and trapped him bang in front as the Kiwi skipper shaped to play to leg. That wicket ended a 57-run partnership for the fourth wicket, Fleming 43/147 deliveries.

By the time Srinath had worked up a good head of steam, Sunil Joshi joined him at the bowling crease and suddenly, it looked like a different game from the one we were watching in the first hour. Joshi bowled a superb attacking spell, tossing the ball right up, floating it in to the right handers, turning some away, making others go through with the arm, and generally posing all kinds of problems.

With Joshi putting on the pressure at one end, Srinath stepped up a notch in pace. Consider this -- Astle was 43/65 deliveries when Srinath came on. The next ten deliveries he faces produces two runs, and all kinds of trouble before Srinath finally does him with an inswinger, turning the batsman inside out to find the edge, Kumble at gully diving to hold low to his right. 179/5 New Zealand.

Sunil Joshi then chips in with a bit of intelligent bowling. Twice, he turns the ball dramatically away from Craig McMillan, beating the bat as the batsman shaped to play. Then he tosses one up on the same line, McMillan goes back, looks to leave what he thinks is another regulation delivery, completely misreads the arm ball and is trapped bang in front as the ball hurries through with the arm onto his pads. McMillan 22/26 balls, and Kiwis 181/6.

At this point, the Srinath-Joshi partnership has taken out 3 Kiwi batsmen for 25 runs in 6 overs, after the first nine wicketless overs yielded 37 runs. And the pressure is well and truly on.

Srinath gave way to Venkatesh Prasad after a fine spell of 6-2-14-2, and Prasad, seemingly having learnt from his misdeeds of the morning, starts pitching the ball right up. And the reward comes when Chris Cairns, unsure whether the ball is going through or seaming to leg, pushes down the wrong line, to find the ball seaming in -- the off cutter where he was looking for the other one -- and going through the gate to take out off and middle. Cairns 7/22, Kiwis 199/7.

That very nearly became 200/8. Prasad again pitched one right up, Parore was drawn into the push, the ball found the edge and MSK Prasad, seeing the ball dying in front of first slip, dived, got the webbing of his glove to the ball, but failed to hang on. Interestingly, the slips throughout the morning insist on staying a couple of paces deeper than they need to be on a pitch playing increasingly slower -- it is a regular feature of Indian slippers in the post-Azhar phase, this tendency to stay back and let the ball die before it gets to them, rather than stand up and run the risk of having the catch actually come to hand. If a catch doesn't come to hand, you can't be blamed for dropping it, can you?

Parore, 8/52 and struggling against Joshi in particular, and Dion Nash, 2/16, took the Kiwis through to lunch on 207/7. The story of the morning is best told in two sets of bowling figures -- the nine overs of the morning, which gave away 37 and let the batsmen settle, and the 22 overs since, which produced 51 runs and four wickets.

Joshi was easily the standout, being introduced after 15 overs were bowled this morning, and producing a spell of 9-4-10-1 to really turn the screws on the Kiwi batsmen just when they were threatening to take the game away from the Indians.

Overall, the morning session produced 88 runs in 31 overs for the loss of 4 wickets -- on balance, thus, the session belonged to India.

In the last four Tests they have played in, the last four Kiwi batsmen have added 100 runs or more in six innings. A repeat of that performance would have been the end for India, as they would have been looking down the throat of a huge lead. As it happened, however, Srinath and Bharadwaj, resuming after the break, took just 10.1 overs to take out the remaining three wickets for the total cost of 8 runs.

Srinath and Bharadwaj both began with maidens. Dion Nash, looking to counter Srinath by standing a foot outside his crease, was shaken by a lovely bouncer that pitched off, reared, and seamed in to him -- the batsman kept ducking, and the ball kept following him, flashing past his nose and causing him to do a quick rethink. Two balls later, Srinath banged one in around off, just short of a length, Nash went on the back foot, and found the ball seaming in again, to touch his glove en route to the keeper. Nash gone for 2/33 balls, and at that point, 4.4 overs had been bowled after lunch without a run being scored.

The first run of the afternoon in fact came after 50 straight scoreless deliveries, when Bharadwaj bowled a no ball, which Parore, trying to drive, hit straight to Kumble for an easy catch -- the no ball, however, negating the dismissal.

Vettori is a sticky customer with the bat, but Srinath went round the wicket and produced a yorker at top pace to take out the middle stump. And immediately thereafter, Bharadwaj rounded off a fine spell by tossing one up to have Shayne O'Connor pushing to short square leg.

New Zealand all out 215 in 91.1 overs, which meant that they had added 96 this morning off 40.1 overs for the loss of seven wickets. And that constituted a fine comeback by the Indians, led by Srinath with a superb spell of 22-9-45-6 and backed up by Joshi, Bharadwaj, and Prasad in his second spell of the morning.

The Indian openers, Gandhi and Ramesh, played out 18 overs before tea. Someone appeared to have talked to Ramesh about his shocking dismissal in the first innings -- this time, his foot movements were positive, he showed patience in playing out the good balls, letting the seaming stuff go through outside off, and picking runs only when the bowlers erred in line and length.

At the other end, Devang Gandhi continued to indicate that he is not really cut out for this level of cricket -- his defensive technique around line of off leaves a lot to be desired. Gandhi for the most part struggled, but gritted through the difficult period and at the break, India had done just what it needed to -- chipped away at the Kiwi lead, and managed to keep all its wickets standing.

The batting performance of the Indian openers was a further pointer to their madness of the first innings. The Kiwi bowlers bowled the same line and length as in the first innings, the track still helped the bowlers to seam the ball around (remember Srinath), but by being a lot more circumspect in shot selection, the openers indicated that this attack could be handled.

The prescription for the post-tea session, thus, will simply be for more of the same -- application, good defence, and a focus on the fact that given this is only the second day of the Test and two innings have been completed, the Indians have all the time in the world to bat their way to a big lead, before turning the screws on the Kiwis in the final innings.

The two hours of play after tea continued the process of putting the first innings in perspective. First Cairns, then Nash, were seen off by the openers, both of whom focussed on survival at the wicket as their main aim.

Gandhi and Ramesh thus waited patiently for the loose balls -- and once the New Zealand bowlers found that the Indian batsmen were not prepared to push deliveries outside off into the hands of the slip cordon, the ideas dried up and the bowling went on the defensive. And as always happens when a bowling side goes on the defensive, the pressure eased on the batsmen, the number of hittable balls began to mount, and runs were far easier to come by.

Ramesh, whose batting in the second innings was in complete variance to that shocking shot he played off the third ball of his first essay, suffered one of his trademark lapses of concentration, pushing a nothing ball outside off from Nash for Stephen Fleming, one of the safest slips in the business, to put down a regulation chance. He was 41 at the time, and twice more in the next two overs, Ramesh fished outside off and was lucky to see the ball drop short of the slips. This period produced a fair share of sloppy shots from the left-handed batsman -- to his luck on the day, his mistakes weren't dire enough to cause his dismissal.

Those let offs jolted him back into full focus, and the batsman settled down once again, seemingly getting his second wind, and continued to work the ball around.

At the other end, Gandhi remained unimpressive, especially around off, to balls seaming around at any kind of pace. But once the ball grew older and Cairns and Nash ran out of steam, Gandhi settled down to chip the ball around, playing the odd firm shot when the bowler erred in line and length, but for the most part getting his runs through checked pushes into the field on both sides of the wicket.

Ramesh got to his 50 off 127 balls, with India on 93/0; India got to its 100 in the first ball of the 38th over, ten more incidentally than the entire first innings had lasted; Gandhi got to his first half century in Tests off 118 balls with India on 109/0. Interestingly, the minute the debutant got to the landmark, skipper Sachin Tendulkar was seen walking out onto the players' balcony, hands raised high and applauding. And next to him stood Saurav Ganguly, Gandhi's statemate and captain, first applauding, then repeatedly gesturing to the batsman to stay focussed.

It was, from the Indians, attritive, accumulative cricket of the kind Test matches require. And it underscored one factor that the shambles that was the first innings tended to hide -- if batsmen can play Test-type cricket, bat with a certain amount of circumspection around line of off, then the Kiwi bowling doesn't have the teeth it needs against a strong opposing lineup.

For the Kiwis, the only bowler to impress -- with control of flight and turn, and the thought that went into his bowling -- was Daniel Vettori. Shayne O'Connor getting just three overs was the one inexplicable factor in the Kiwi performance in the second innings -- the left arm medium pacer didn't do anything outstanding in the three overs we saw, but neither was he so bad that he deserved only the three overs he did get. Into the final hour of the day, Fleming had to call on the part-time services of Nathan Astle as part of his defensive ploy, letting his main bowlers rest while Astle shared the bowling burden with Vettori.

India went in at close with a score of 115/0, Ramesh batting 58 off 166, Gandhi batting 52 off 138. And it is not that the New Zealanders bowled worse than they did in the first innings, simply that the Indians batted the heck of a lot better, showing great application and concentration.

For India, the gameplan from here on becomes obvious -- with three days of play remaining, the ask will be to bat out the first hour on the third morning, then start pushing the scoring along, focussing on an ideal of putting a lead of 275, 300 on the board by late afternoon of day four.

Given the Kiwi bowling, the Indian batting lineup, and the nature of the track, it can be done. And anything above 275, to chase on a fifth day wicket, will prove too stiff an ask for the Kiwis.

Whether the Indians have the required application with the bat is the one question the third day will answer.

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