Nothing went right for Sri Lanka on day 1 of second Test match against India at GreenPark, Kanpur. First Sri Lankan captain loss the toss and then in the veryfirst over Mahela Jayawardne dropped a dolly to give life to dangerous Virendra Sehwag who later went on to score a blistering knock of 131 runs of just 122 balls.
Apart from first hour of play, the rest of the day completely belongs to the Indians. The delhi-duo taken full advantage of wicket as they played some really sparkling strokes all over the ground during their stay at the crease. Both put on 233 runs for the first wicket before Sehwag got out trying to play Muralitharan over cover.
At the close of play India scored a record 417/2 with Rahul Dravid batting on 85 runs and Sachin Tendulkar is unbeaten on 20 runs. It was the first time in the history of cricket when India manages to get pass 400 run mark in a single day of a test match.
It was the sixth instance for India when both openers scored a century in an inning.
Gautam Gambhir is really becoming a back-bone of Indian team game-by-game. In his last 9 test matches he has scored seven test century. Today’s century was his fourth consecutive century and now he became the third Indian batsman to achieve the feet after Sunil Gavaskar and Rahul Dravid. Gambhir's numbers in 2009 are staggering. He has a average of 93.81 in the last nine Tests.
Gautam Gambhir (167 runs) first put on 233 runs partnership with Virendra Sehwag for the first wicket in just 41.2 overs before forging another 137-run association with Rahul Dravid (85 not out) to put India in commanding position of second test match at Kanpur.
With the situation they are in, India will look to score in excess of 700 runs to put pressure on the Sri Lankan batting orders. On the other hand Sri Lanka will try to bowl out India as quickly as possible to give themselves an outside chance of winning this test match which seems highly impossible.
