It’s difficult to find a common link between a youngster bent on making the most of a golden run of form and an old hand fighting to rediscover his touch. One trait they do have in common is that both Gautam Gambhir and Rahul Dravid love to carry their match bats back to their hotel rooms, fiddle with them and indulge in a bit of shadow practice. On Friday, they also carried their bats through the first day’s play at the PCA Stadium in Mohali — Dravid spending just 14 minutes less than Gambhir’s day-long vigil.

The left-hander scored his second consecutive century at this ground, as well as his third of the year, adding another coating to a purple patch that has already seen him score 964 runs this calendar year. And Dravid managed to find his way out of a barren patch, bringing up his first half-century in nine outings. At the end of a shortened day’s play, India reached 179/1 — Gambhir unbeaten on 106 and Dravid on 65 — in a 173-run second-wicket partnership.

Long delays

A 20-minute delay at the start of play, and stumps being called 42 minutes early due to bad light, meant a loss of 18 overs in the day, and the ICC might consider leaving the decision on using floodlights on the match-referee rather than the captains.

India remained unaffected by the early delay, and after winning an important toss, settled into a crawl that was perhaps sparked by the nature of the pitch — one which afforded a bit of help initially, but then chose to remain unresponsive to the quicks and spin bowlers alike.

... contd.