As expected, India started the tour on disastrous note at Centurion as their famed batting line-up consist of legends, collapsed like nine-pins. It was looked like Proteas were playing against any club-side and not against the No.1 ranked test team. I mentioned in my earlier posts clearly that India will not going to win this test series as well and Indian team proved me correct on Day-1 itself. I think lack of match-practice cost India badly as India did not play any warm-up game before the test match and that is causing big problem. No matter how much you practice in the Nets but ultimately it is match practice which helps you to get acclimatised to the conditions especially when you are touring South Africa, Australia and England.
It seems to me that history is going to repeat here as we went to New Zealand in 2006-2007 season and played on green-tops which had very bad effect on our batting. We lost that series and we were thrown out of the World-Cup as well after first round itself. I will not be surprised if same thing happens after this tour as well because Proteas will not going to make life easy for Team India and team India is already on back-foot. This match is over for India as far as I am concerned. I think now India don't have any chance to save this game as whatever help was in the pitch was on first day and exploited very well by South African bowlers. Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel bowled very well and supported well by Kallis and Tsotsobe. I must say whatever Proteas planned was executed perfectly by their bowlers and fielders in this match. Looking at the performance of Proteas on Day-1 it looked like every wicket was planned and they did great home-work on all the Indian batsmen and bowled accordingly. Now one thing is sure, India is out of the contest in this match and Proteas going to win this match because all their batsmen are in good form and they will play better than India batsmen in these conditions. India minus Zaheer Khan is in big trouble at Centurion.
In Ashes, Australia made a great come-back at WACA as Johnson celebrated his return to the team with five wicket haul and help his team to take vital lead of 81 runs. Englishment were 77-0 at one stage great spell from Johnson reduce them to 187. Now Australia in driver's seat at WACA and it looks like they got the boost which they required and now on they will not going to throw away this opportunity. Now this matches in interesting phase and if Aussies win this match then this series will be alive again but for that Aussie batsmen have to play very well in second innings and there is lot depends on Ponting how he bats. Strauss played very well for his half-century but apart from him nobody contributed to the team's cause and now Englishmen are on back-foot and they have uphill task ahead in this test.
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