When Indian opening bowlers failed

New Delhi: It was absolute carnage in the first eight overs of the Australian innings when the best fielder happened to be a pair of stumps.

Australia would have averaged eight (with 64 on the board)at the end of it rather than the seven they achieved (at 56 for none) had two cracking shots (one apiece by Hayden and Gilchrist) not hit the stumps at the non-striker's end.

India had probably been thinking too much about the middle overs in the run up to the match and completely forgot about the right beginning. Most of the balls were in the driving range on a pitch conducive to stoke-making and very few induced errors from the batsmen.

There were as many as five wides, which showed panic in the face of a relentless attack, which was leading to one four per over on average. There were three big overs - Sreesanth’s third and fourth and Zaheer’s first – which produced 10 runs or more, giving an initial thrust to the innings which was missing at Bangalore and Kochi.

If we take the overall partnership of Hayden-Gilchrist, out of 69 runs coming from the bat, 38 were scored from the on side (55 per cent), which did show the problem in the line, allowing the batsmen to play lots of strokes on the on side.

Coming back to those critical first eight overs, while Gilchrist scored his 21 runs off just 22 deliveries, Hayden, who started the assault in the very first over, was even better at 30 off 26 balls.

Their 56 for none was a far cry from 40 for two at Bangalore and 36 for two at Kochi at similar stages.