Rahul Dravid returned to form with a half-century on the first day of the second Test against England in Mohali and the Times' Simon Wilde won't be surprised if the innings now turned into a full Dravid marathon, hour upon hour of monk-like devotion to the business crushing English hopes.
Watching Dravid bat remains an occupation for the connoisseur. Unlike Virender Sehwag, he pays the bowler due respect at all times and by the time he walked off, with 65 to his name, it was hard not to calculate what Sehwag might have scored had he and not Dravid batted for 205 balls. The answer was 160. Oh well.
The high-security surroundings were a fitting environment for the Indian team's own designated head of security, Rahul Dravid, to prosper, writes Simon Hughes in the Daily Telegraph.
He would make a highly efficient guard, treating the ball as an intruder, an individual without the correct pass, that must be regarded with the utmost suspicion and generally repelled at all costs.
Vic Marks writes in the Guardian that the Mohali pitch looks like a fast bowlers' graveyard unless reverse-swing comes into play.
On a slow surface with little turn on offer, Pietersen dispensed with the bat/pad and silly point. Instead he wanted to throttle the batsmen with a ring of seven fielders saving the single. This felt the correct strategy and represented a fresh flexibility from the England camp. Unfortunately another glance at the scoreboard suggests it didn't work. Why? Well there are at least three reasons. Panesar regularly overpitched in his first spell, which scuppered the throttling process for a while; Dravid has limitless patience and Swann was plain unlucky. Swann teased Gambhir cleverly. On 70 the tenacious little left-hander offered a hard chance to Paul Collingwood at slip, which refused to stick; on 72 Daryl Harper unaccountably denied Swann's increasingly desperate lbw appeal.
In the Independent Andrew Flintoff chats with Angus Fraser about his decision to return to India, the first Test in Chennai, the security guard outside his hotel room and bowling to Sachin Tendulkar.
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