Related Links : Australia in India 2008/09 | Board President’s XI Vs Australians – Scorecard
The second day’s play at Hyderabad was another bad day for the Aussies. Their batsmen failed to dominate the second string spin attack of Piyush Chawla and Pragyan Ojha to end up with a wobbling 191 for 4 in 68 overs. If not for a partnership of 63 between Hussey and Haddin, the story could have been a lot more worse and it now depends on this duo to turn that into a big one on the third day. Michael Hussey is on 54 and Haddin on 34 at stumps on the second day.
The second day’s morning frustrated the Australians as Parthiv Patel (62 from 97 balls with 8 fours) and Irfan Pathan (56 from 81 balls with 8 fours) went on to register half centuries to push the score to 455. Parthiv was cleaned up by a delivery that kept very low from Peter Siddle while Pathan got dismissed only because he was trying to play the big shots. Irfan Pathan looked to make a mockery of especially Stuart Clark by even coming down the track to the tall fast bowler. Towards the end, Piyush Chawla played a nice little innings of 23 with 5 fours. Johnson had the best figures amongst the bowlers with a return of 4 for 75 in 23.4 overs.
The Australian reply wasn’t a good one once Matthew Hayden played a rash drive outside off to a swinging delivery from Irfan Pathan. Hayden by then was trying to unsettle the bowlers with his forceful strokeplay by which he had collected 4 fours in his 20. Simon Katich (15), the other opener also failed when he gave a bat pad chance off left arm spinner Pragyan Ojha to reduce the score to 54 for 2. The next pair of Ponting and Hussey got stuck in the repair job with the Skipper looking to take on the spinners every now and then. Just when Ponting appeared to be in full control came a wonderful googly that pitched outside off and spun back sharply to clean up Ponting’s stumps through the gate. Ponting (41 from 67 balls with 5 fours and 2 sixes) was bamboozled as he didn’t read the googly at all.
Once again the mighty Aussies came under pressure at 94 for 3 and the runs were hard to come by which is very rare for them. Piyush Chawla was a completely different bowler once he got a stunning delivery to send back Ponting. The leggie soon got Michael Clarke (18 from 48) in his kitty as well by deceiving him with one that didn’t turn to force the right hander to play along the wrong line. Any further damage in the day’s play was efficiently arrested by Mike Hussey and Brad Haddin.