England Pile On Misery

A dismal bowling performance was capped by the abject failure of the openers asIndia dropped into disaster zone on the fourth day of the second Test against Englandat Trent Bridge today.

The lower order English batsmen made a mockery of an inept bowling attack, piling up as many as 282 runs for thelast five wickets as the home team reached a mammoth 617 in their first innings in reply to India's 357.

Buried under a deficit of 260 runs, India were off to the worst possible start of their second innings with openersVirender Sehwag and Wasim Jaffer consumed by Matthew Hoggard and Andrew Flintoff respectively in the first two oversitself.

With two wickets down for just 11 runs, Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar joined together and took the score to 99 whenthe umpires offered light to the Indian batsmen which they accepted to bring to an end a torturous day for the team inthe field.

Dravid was batting on 34 off 56 balls while Tendulkar looked in great touch during his run a ball 56 which contained11 confident hits to the fence.

On a day of contrasting fortunes for the two teams, the England tailenders made merry - Alec Stewart and Craig Whitehelping themselves to effortless 87 and an unbeaten 94 respectively - while the Indian openers came a cropper.

Stewart, unbeaten on 30 overnight in England's score of 341 for five, added 97-runs with Andrew Flintoff in a blazingsixth wicket partnership that set the stage for quickfire scoring by the English batsmen.

With the Indian bowling as lacklustre as at anytime during this match, Stewart and Flintoff picked up the gapsalmost at will and scored mostly through boundaries. Stewart was lucky in the morning session when some of his edges landedin no-man's lands and a catch in the slips was not picked cleanly by Sehwag.

But he played some glorious shots after reaching his half century with a streaky boundary and raced into the eighties inno time.

England were already ahead by 85 runs when Zaheer Khanraised India's hopes of a fightback by striking twice in threedeliveries. He uprooted the off-stump of Flintoff (33) with a delivery that kept low and did an action replay with Stewartone ball later.

But the inability to wipe off the tail once again came to haunt the Indian bowlers and the last three wickets went on toscore 184 runs. White, whose only Test hundred came against India at Ahmedabad in December last year, came up with anotherfrustrating knock for the Indians and very nearly completed his second century.

He put on 60 runs for the eighth wicket Dominic Cork and an astounding 103 runs for the ninth withHoggard.  Cork, who batted despite an injury, and Hoggard chipped in with useful scores of 31 and 32 respectively as the Indianbowlers almost put their hands up in despair.

After Harbhajan Singh dismissed Cork and Ashish Nehra sent back Hoggard, White added a further 21 runs with lastmanSteve Harmison (3). White unleashed a flurry of strokes in a bid to reach his century and even hit Harbhajan Singh for theonly six of the match so far.

However, the landmark eluded him by just six runs when Harmison, playing his first Test match, gave a simple catch toJaffer at point to give Ajit Agarkar his second wicket.

The Indian misery seemed to have been over but in fact it was just the beginning of the second part of trouble. On a pitch that was still quite lively, Hoggard showedthe Indian bowlers how to bowl when he started the second innings with a beautiful outgoing delivery that almost tookthe edge of Sehwag's bat.

Sehwag, who made a brilliant century in the first innings, survived that ball but not the second when he put hisfront foot forward and took a full toss on his toes to be given out leg before wicket even before a single run wasscored in the Indian second innings.

Ironically, Sehwag found himself in illustrious company after his dismissal. He was only the second player to havescored a century and a nought in the same match at this ground, the first being none other than Sir Donald Bradmanhimself.

There was no such dubious consolation for Jaffer though, the Mumbai opener falling for his second low score of thematch. He too was adjudged leg before wicket off a Flintoff delivery that straightened up after pitching. Jaffer, whofailed to score in the first innings, made only five.

That brought two of India's most experienced players to the crease and surprisingly both of them showed a lot ofpositive attitude for players faced with such a difficult situation.Tendulkar, under fire from critics after his successivelow scores in the first three innings of this series, came with an aggressive intent and never let the bowling dominatehim.

He quickly outscored Dravid and then hit three successive fours off Hoggard in the 11th over to reach into his thirties.Dravid also was not bogged down by the enormity of the task and played a few fluent shots.

The Indians had reached 62 for two in the 12th over when bad light stopped play for about half an hour. When playresumed, both Dravid and Tendulkar survived a few anxious moments against some good deliveries but then settled downagain to rebuild the Indian innings.

Tendulkar picked three more boundaries in another over of Hoggard, the second of which brought his half-century off just44 balls and also saw him cross Sir Geoffry Boycott's 8114 Test runs.

Tendulkar hit two perfect straight driven boundaries off Hoggard which were a visual delight. Dravid also chipped inwith his part, cutting Harmison over the infield for his fifth four as he too got into his thirties.

With about nine more overs remaining, light once again faded and the Indians accepted the offer from the umpires forthe second time, this time for good.

PTI