Saurav Ganguly had his first substantive outing of the English county season, and cashed in at stumps on day two of the Frizzell County Championship game between Kent and Glamorgan at Cardiff, Ganguly was batting 61 off 73 deliveries, with eight fours and a six.
Coming out to bat at 3/79, the Indian captain has thus far been the major contributor to 96-run stand for the fourth wicket.
In the match between Middlesex and Surrey at Lord's, Irfan Pathan produced a star turn with the bat for Middlesex, scoring 68 off 93 deliveries with 11 fours before being bowled by national teammate Harbhajan Singh, now wearing Surrey colors. That knock made him the second highest run-getter of the innings as Middlesex amassed 437. Harbhajan with the ball had 35-10-87-2, his victims being the top two Middlesex run-getters.
At stumps, Surrey had in response made 157/2; Pathan, who opened the bowling, has been wicketless thus far, finishing up with 12-3-25-0.
On a blog maintained by Rediff staffer Prem Panicker, UK resident Rahul provides an eyewitness update on the Middlesex-Surrey game:
"Caught the final session of the surrey middlessex game on Sky just as Ifran walked in. Initially looked all at sea, playing and missing everything that Ormond & later bicknell were bowling to him, the low point being 3 balls in one over that all pitched on middle stump and all missed the off stump by varying degrees.
There was also a definite strategy to bowl short chest high with a bunch of slips and a leg gully leading to one commentator to comment that it was a change from the flat beds of Bombay.(Mumbai he corrected himself..they all seem to do that). Anyway.
To his credit Irfan didn't look flustered or intimidated and kept practising his pull shots everytime he missed until he finally got one in the zone and unleashed a fabulous cover drive drawing immediate comparison with Sourav of old.
And a few more followed in the following overs. So he definitely appears to have the temperament, may need to tighten technique a bit. (Bat coming down at an angle and so on..but that's my view).
Harbhajan on the other hand was just OK and helped a lot by some really good support in the field. Looked a bit rusty but overalle seemed to be gradually getting in to a groove.
His wicket came from some tight overs before (thanks to the fielding)..and also generated some interesting conversation between charles colville and nasser hussain about the whole throwing controversy. Charles kept prodding nasser into giving his view on the doosra since the wicket ball appeared to have been the doosra and nasser interestingly said he couldnt see any problem and that it was good for the game that offspinners had come up with this sort of delivery and essentially he couldnt really be bothered about the degree that his arm was bent or whatever the mechanics were about the throwing controversy...he couldnt tell with the naked eye and that was that. Refreshing to say the very least."
And a further update on today's play: "Caught a little bit more county action this afernoon. Pathan bowling a good tight line, steady pace (77-78) with not too much assistance from the conditions(8-2-10-0). His opening partner, Alan Richardson on the other hand extracted far more from the pitch and was rewarded with a wicket and a dropped catch.
"Pathan will obviously benefit from the experience but he does need to work on adding that yard or two of pace to make him a bit more effective in unhelpful conditions. Overall doing well and seems to be enjoying it too."
