Kevin Petersen powers England to strong position despite a hard working Praveen Kumar’s five wickets on the 2nd day of Lord’s test. England is in dominant position with India batting at 17/0 after the host declared for 474/8.
The day belongs to two players where one is written off and another got criticized before the series started. Kevin Petersen scored his first century after more than two years in England and went on to score his third career double century towards the end of the day. After heavily been criticized for his selection on the first day’s play, Praveen Kumar proved everyone wrong by taking 5 wickets on the 2nd day to keep England checked with no Zaheer in Indian team.
No Zaheer and India’s woes
The day begins with much of joy for England as the news kept coming that Zaheer won’t be bowling in 1st innings surely. With 8 wickets in hand and India is already a man down in bowling, leaving this test match pretty much out of India’s reach. Both Trott and Petersen started the day confidently helped with some ordinary bowling from Ishant and Harbhajan.
Praveen started is in roar by first trapping Trott on the backfoot for 70 mean while Peterson slowly marching towards the century. It took 134 deliveries for him to score 50, the longest he ever took in his career so far and later Bell joined with him to take England forward. Harbhajan bowled defensively and allowed the batsmen to score freely, even his former captain Ganguly on the air is not happy with Bhajji bowling sums up his sick bowling nowadays.
Praveen five for and Petersen double
England went to lunch with 217/3 but to all surprise after the lunch, Dhoni handed over the wicket keeping duties to Dravid and bowled himself after having seen enough with Indian seamers toothless bowling. At the age of 38, Dravid doing the keeping after 7 long years yet this has not prevented Indian bowlers from bowling awful deliveries down the leg to test his keeping skill. Dravid gave his best but one too many bad balls means there are plenty of byes given away.
After taking the second new ball, Dhoni is back to his duty and handed over the ball to Ishant to start the proceeding with second new ball. Peterson pulled and driven Ishant to reach his 18th test century. Soon after that Praveen produced a double to remove both Bell (45) and Morgan (0) on the same over to put India right back in the match. Morgan dismissal showed another reason why technology can’t be relied on. Replays showed there is no contact with bat but Morgan later said he apparently hit the ball and walked off with no disappointment on his dismissal.
India got a much needed break to run through England but Matt Prior joined Petersen and played some aggressive cricket where they milked Indian poor bowling, thus started piling on the runs. Praveen is bought back again and yet again he doesn’t disappoint the faith Dhoni had on him. Praveen again produced twin dismissals in single over. First, Prior was caught behind for 71 and very next ball had Broad LBW for 0. Tireless Praveen Kumar got his 5th wicket on his 40th over of the innings and still managed to smile despite being toiled hard throughout the day. This is Praveen Kumar’s first five wicket haul in test cricket but surely many in the reckoning.
Swann and Petersen upped the ante in a sense England is going to declare soon after Petersen double century. Raina dismissed Swann but in his next over Petersen hit a four, six, four and another 4 through off-side to reach his third double century. Right after his double, England declared the innings at 474/8 giving India a shady half an over to bat.
Gambhir and Mukund negotiated the remaining six over for the day where Mukund survived two close calls in the last over against Tremlett. India ended the day at 17/0 with plenty of work ahead on the 3rd day.
Tags: Cricket, England, India, Kevin Petersen, Praveen Kumar, Test Cricket, Test Match
