The Fortune could swung to either side....

The mighty come back....

    It could be much earlier, to dodge England batting order. But soon after lunch Indian, bowlers changed their plans, what they have done to England top order batsmen. Indian seamers pitched it up and seamed it away from the English batsmen till tea; got the result for it plumbing England to 124/8. But after tea, they inexplicably abandoned plans, they resorted to shorter length with wider balls, this gave Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann to free their arms and scored around seven runs per over that resulted them to a decent score of 221 runs in their first innings.
  At the same time, Indian skipper Dhoni's fielding arrangement also astonished me a bit. Rather then setting up an attacking one he resorted much on defence. This gave more advantage to the England tail-enders. Broad's some shorts went tantalizingly over the Indian fielders while others fell too short. Indian fielders' "snail-like" movement also helped them a lot. Finally a full slaughter from Praveen Kumar ended Swann's anguish at gully. There were no celebrations,only angry relief. Two sessions of good play by the Indian bowlers completely unraveled by these two players in just 12 overs.
  Earlier winning the toss, Dhoni again chosen to field first seeing the mighty conditions prevailing then and bowlers did a fantastic job to back captain's decision. ZaheerKhan's replacement in this test, Sresanth bowled enthusiastically at right places and swung away which wrecked English middle order. Also he joined in formidable alliance with Ishant and Praveen who well utilized their pace and swing. The result was that England were down to 124/8 at tea.
  England bowlers in reply started off flamboyantly as Anderson knicked Indian opener Abhinav Mukund to gully which clearly showed that he didn't learned anything from the Lord's test. At stumps on day-1 Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman carried the Indian first innings score to 24/1 without much loss.

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India sunken in Anderson's fifer....

  A win in the first test match for India was improbable at the beginning of the last day of the test, yet a draw would  have been an incredible result. And for that credible result, Indian batsmen needed a special effort. The key to this was overnight not-out batsmen VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid. I thought they will do it as both were tamed under such conditions and are capable of doing so. But both these giants fell before the leader of the English attack James Anderson in a well similar manner. For Anderson it was rising from ashes as he hadn't done anything in the first innings.

  Just look at the wickets Anderson claimed in the second innings and sealed England's victory in the 2000-th test match and the 100-th between India and England. Rahul Dravid,VVS Laxman, Sachin Tendulkar and Harbhajan Singh. I can say that England's victory in the first test match was a team effort except in the final day were the final nail had to be struck and it was perfectly executed by James Anderson....

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