Just some thoughts on Day 3

I thought the batting today was alright. One always felt comfortable because of the healthy lead we had but it was really nothing spectacular to watch. Dada and Tendulkar looked solid until a bored Umpire Taufel decided he wanted to see new faces on the pitch. VVS was terribly boring. He hit a couple of okay shots but the rest of the innings was just so blah, especially for a VVS innings. At one point Kumble looked the more elegant of the two batsmen. He scored a quick 30 and was off before Zaheer came in and decided to charge towards the fielders with his bat raised in the air. I'm not sure what that was about but it was fun to watch.

Sreesanth looked very disturbed today. He must have set some sort of record during the last over. It took him forever to finish it. First he broke his run up [and not for the first time today] then he decided to come over the wicket to bowl the last ball [he had done the same for the first ball] which turned out to be a wide. Then he tried to run out the batsman at the non striker's end [the guy didn't even notice this because he was facing the wrong way but was also well inside his crease] and all of this in the span of one over!

Plus between deliveries he would scratch his ear and adjust his hand ornaments which included multicoloured threads, rubber bands and some sort of blue feather type thing. Then he would tie his shoelaces only to retie them again before the next ball followed by stretching of random body parts. Basically he came off completely demented. Why our wonderful captain [who by the way i didn't see all day] decided to give him that last over was beyond me.

And this is what annoys me immensely about Dravid. You hardly see him on the field. At least Dada would come up and talk to his bowlers and fielders and generally make his presence felt. With Dravid you forget he's even there.

The rest of the bowling looked ordinary. Zak bowled a few decent deliveries but nothing fascinating. Kumble tried really hard but you cant force a wicket in that little span of time. I do like it when they attack the batsman with fielders all around when Kumble is bowling. They need to do more of that tomorrow and for once [since we have some sort of a lead] we can afford to do it.

As for the English team this was actually the first time i got to watch Panesar and i really liked what i saw. Turns out Sidebottom is kinda cool too. James Anderson provided the eye candy as usual. Thank You Jimmy. I did miss Flintoff though, but he's probably in the middle of some lake drinking on a boat.

The pitch looked kinda dull today but we'll probably see some due tomorrow morning and hopefully our friend Sreesanth will have sorted himself out. We really need to win this thing and its all set up so beautifully. I just wish we had a more innovative guy leading the team.

edited at 1:13pm: 62 runs to win y’all!

Of course all the action happened in the last session of play most of which I missed because I was on my way to work! What's amazing though is how well my ear is trained. In spite of the booming noise that was my hair dryer I thought I heard the stumps breaking. I stopped the dryer immediately and heard the crowd cheer. It was Vaughn. Finally! He did play a beautiful innings but it went on way too long for my liking. Zak bowled amazing little spells throughout the day while Sreesanth tried to intimidate the batsmen with strange faces. He failed but oh well we got all ten in the end and that’s all that counts. Yay!