It is Pujara again - tall amidst ruins - another century

India play England at Wankhede,  Mumbai in the 2^nd Test of the Series Will this do something good to Test Cricket – though BCCI has no special plans..

Today’s match at Wankhede is touted to be special for some reasons.  It is dasher Virender Sehwag’s 100th test.  May be we are slowly moving away from crowds to see their home stars – Sachin Tendulkar may not be drawing the same no. of crowds that he used to and sure he is not making those runs, in the manner he used to earlier. 

This morning there was news that India won the toss – Dhoni immediately opted to bat – and as immediately lost Gautam Gambhir for 0; wickets crumbled Sehwag also gone and Sachin disappointed again. 

Watching the game for many years now, Virender Sehwag is a different opener with different class and different mould.  From the time, I started following it was Sunil Gavaskar and his array of partners –

Farokh Engineer; Anshuman Gaekwad, Dilip Vengsarkar, Parthasarathi Sharma [did he open ?]; Chetan Chauhan, Krishnamachari Srikkanth……………..then there were others Navjot Singh Sidhu, Wasim Jaffer, Akash Chopra to name a few – in between there were Prannoy Roy, Arun Lal, and a host of others – some designated and some stop gap.

Incidentally, Rahul Dravid’s 100^th Test at the same venue turned out to be flop as he made that wrong decision of sending England in and losing the match.

Today, the cavalier Viru failed…… so did many others but there was Pujara to reckon.  The man from Saurashtra, Cheteshwar Arvind Pujara followed his unbeaten 200 in the First Test with a neatly complied ton here at Mumbai.  Giving him company is Ravichandran Ashwin with a well made 50 when reports last came in.

At close of play Pujara with 114 and Ashwin with 60 were at the crease; their 97 run partnership taking India to 266/6; Monty Panesar with 4 for 91 shared the honours of the 1st day.

With regards - S. Sampathkumar