Cook and Patel dominate second day against India A

31 October, 2012

Alastair Cook and Samit Patel put up a good partnership of 153 runs to take England's total to 286 runs for the loss of four wickets on the second day of the tour match at Brabourne stadium, Mumbai. Cook scored a a brilliant century along with Patel, who scored 82 runs.

AFTER THE Indian A team put up a good score of 369 runs on the board on the first day of the tour match, which was played against England at Brabourne stadium, Mumbai. The English team was keen to put up a similar score at the end of second day's play. How well did they respond with their captain taking all the limelight with a century against his name and not to forget Samit Patel's contribution with the bat. At the end of the day's play, the England score read 286 for the loss of four wickets, which may be short of the Indian A team's first innings total but it is a decent score with the final day of the match to be played tomorrow.

The England team did not start its innings well with their youngster, Compton, failing to even open his account as Dinda scalped his wicket in the second over of the game with the score reading 2 for the loss of 1 wicket. But it was the experience of Jonathan Trott and Alastair Cook, which helped them see off the new ball as Trott fell to Raina, after scoring 56 runs, which brought the dangerous batsmen, Pietersen to the crease, who was ironically dismissed by whom he once called 'pie chucker', Yuvraj Singh. Pietersen needs to be on top form, as he is one of the key English batsmen for the English team.

In the latter half of the day, it was all about Samit Patel's dominant innings, which included a dozen boundaries. The batsmen looked comfortable against both the Indian A spinners as well as the pacers, which augers well for the series ahead. As far as the Indian bowling was concerned, it was the part-time spinners, Yuvraj Singh and Suresh Raina, who took two and one wicket respectively and troubled the English batsmen for a brief period.

The English team might be interested to bowl against the Indian batsmen and putting their bowlers to test against the strong Indian A batting line, which is likely to happen when they play against the senior team, which boasts of good batsmen. One can say that the batsmen passed the India A test, but the bowlers were not that impressive, so they might get a second chance to prove themselves on the final day tomorrow.