It must be so frustrating for the Kiwis, they weathered the Sehwag storm, saw off Dravid, Tendulkar, Raina and MS, as well as snuffing out Laxman before he batted them out of the game, only to see the best test No.8 since Ashley Giles put them to the sword, with Sreesanth of all people keeping him company.
He has already scored 69 and a match saving century in the 1st test. The worst bit about it though must be the fact that you have contained India’s top 6 and then get done by Harbhajan, talk about doing the hard bit well and then balls’ing things up.
At least it’s not just the Aussies who are struggling to see off tails at the moment, fair play to the Kiwis for making sure Australia don’t feel isolated with this problem. Won’t get too smug about it though, as it will probably be England on the receiving end of it soon enough.
Speaking of England, I was a bit critical of their batting in the 1st innings of the first warm up game, since then I’m glad they have proved me wrong and have started to put things right.
Since writing that there has been two centuries for Strauss, scores for Collingwood and Bell and the surprise of all surprises, a century for Alastair Cook. It’s amazing how slowly you can come back to form when you are immune from being dropped. The real shock is that he didn’t save it til the 2nd innings of the final warm up game.
It’s good to see the bowlers in good nick as well, all have been in the wickets and James Anderson has shown no signs of his rib injury effecting him either. Expect that if Strauss could get some runs out of Trott and Prior against Australia A this week, he would happily take that as a successful set of warm up matches.
