To say the final session of the day bore no joy for the visitors wouldbe an understatement worthy of the English, the supposed originalmasters of the art

Anand Vasu23-Nov-2001To say the final session of the day bore no joy for the visitors wouldbe an understatement worthy of the English, the supposed originalmasters of the art. Two cricketers who are more than used to settingup stalls and batting out over after over did exactly that, withSridharan Sriram accumulating 120 and Jacob Martin helping himself to83, as the Indian Board President’s XI replied to the England total of320 with 256/2 at the end of the second day’s play.The bowling charts make very poor reading if you are an England fan.The most experienced specialist fast bowler, Matthew Hoggard, returnedfigures of 17-3-34-1. The others were not far behind, with only MartynBall picking up a wicket. James Ormond, Craig White and Richard Dawsontoiled hard without reward, giving away 139 runs between them off 43overs.England, however, have no real need to lose heart at the proceedingsof the second day. Posting 320, they did their bit in putting thematch out of reach of a Board President’s XI victory. On seeing this,Martin used the day to send out signals to the selectors. One thoughtthe two-day affair at Mumbai was rendered useless by its limited time.The story was pretty much the same at Hyderabad.Sridharan Sriram is a grafter at the best of times. In essence more ofa left-arm spinner than a batsman, the left-hander was recently pitchforked into the opening slot. Whenever there was width to thedelivery, Sriram was quick to open the face of the bat and guide theball to the third man area. The full delivery on the pads was notspared either, repeatedly being tickled away to the vacant fine-legregion. But it was not the strokes he played, but the lack of themthat singled out his innings.Defending solidly when the ball threatened the wickets, Sriram gaveaway little to the bowlers. Spending the whole day out in the middle,he saw off 236 balls in his innings of 120. On 14 occasions, hemanaged to find the fence. Whether this innings will once more put himin the limelight and prod the selectors into picking him remains to beseen.The day however, did not belong solely to Sriram. Skipper Martinimpressed with his approach to batting. Unlike Dinesh Mongia (44), whoflattered to deceive, Martin stuck to his task admirably. Drivingthrough the covers with aplomb, he forced the bowlers to change theirlength a touch and made them bowl to his strength. With that achieved,the ball disappeared through the mid-wicket region regularly offbooming pulls. 83 runs resulted, dotted with 10 boundaries.The pairing of Sriram and Martin rubbed salt in the wounds of theEnglish, accelerating just a touch towards the end of the day. WithEnglish shoulders dropping, Sriram and Martin went in for the kill,piling up 190 runs for the third wicket. The worrying thing from theEnglish point of view is that they could not control the tempo of thegame against a pair of defensive batsmen. What then will be theiranswer to the attacking cricket that the likes of Sachin Tendulkar andVVS Laxman will dish out?Unfortunately for the visitors, things are not going to get any easieras the tour progresses. Their best bet, as Nasser Hussain put it, wasto stay in the game as long as possible and wait for the hosts to feelthe pressure. The way things are unfolding, you could excuse theEngland captain for thinking that this might never happen.