Blood bath on Day 1

“There are many more wrong answers than right ones, and they are easier to find.” goes the famous quote and I thought how apt it is - for an opening line to sum up the opening day at Lahore and more important Rahul Dravid’s state of mind.

After promising hard, bouncy tracks for almost a month, Pakistan presented a pitch that can be at best described as comatose that had resulted in a blood bath for Indian bowlers. I have been hollering through the roof top that all this talk about Shoiab is meaningless unless Indian bowling pulls up it socks and it did not exactly do that. Dravid lost an important toss but more important lost an important notch in the captaincy status – when he ‘accommodated’ (as many a news paper article including Telegraph pointed out) Dada. Don’t tell me that Dada is brought into the XI for the useless overs he can bowl or for his (non existent) batting. I can understand how Dravid would have felt since after all this is not the 1^st time I have seen this. It happened to even SRT and made him throw up the towel.

On a day, Indian bowling was visibly below par, Pakistan batsmen had an easy time and as happened so many times in the past – all out of form batsman wait for Indians to show up and revive their carriers. Younis Khan, who could not put bat to ball in the ODI series against England, had a double dip, feasting on the pedestrian attack and as much as 40 4s were gifted on an unresponsive pitch. Pak can easily declare by tea on 2^nd day with 600+ score and thereby effectively eliminate one of the 3 results possible. I am almost convinced that India weighed down with all the Dada Saga is on the back foot – not only in this test but for the whole series.