Indian team started their super power series with three day tour match against Victoria. They were struggling at 38/3 before Rahul Dravid (33 runs) and Saurav Ganguly (51 runs) put on 72* for the fourth wicket and still going strongly.
Earlier acting captain M.S. Dhoni won the toss and decided to bat first in a rain interrupted days of play. India got up to disastrous start when they loss their opener Wasim Jaffer with only 3 runs on the board. Jaffer who was in superb knock against Pakistan was out in trying to pull the bowl from outside off stump without troubling the scorer.
Second man to go was V.V.S Laxman who was out in trying to play the bowl fine and gave the simple catch to wicketkeeper. After dismissal of Laxman, Sachin Tendulkar arrives to the crease to give some sustainability to Indian batting. He looks in superb form in his 19 runs knock from 18 balls before bowled of a no ball. But umpire was not able to see that the ball was bowled far from the front line of crease.
The Mumbai batsman has been unlucky on a number of occasions in the past, but two lbw decisions in Australia stand out in memory.
During the 1999-2000 tour, Tendulkar was declared out by Daryl Harper when he tried to duck but got hit on the shoulder. Replays showed that the ball was too high. On India’s last tour, Steve Bucknor had declared Tendulkar lbw when the ball seemed to be missing the stumps and bowler Jason Gillespie too showed surprise at the decision.
Earlier Rahul Dravid and Wasim Jaffer came out to open the Indian inning. Virendra Sehwag was left out from the squad for this tour match.
Here are the lists of player playing in this match:
Victoria: David Hussey (captain), Nick Jewell, Rob Quiney, Aiden Blizzard, Aaron Finch, Andrew McDonald, Matthew Wade, John Hastings, Peter Siddle, Bryce McGain, Allan Wise.
