WILL HE TAKE IT BACK?
England must be wondering why must Lara keep scoring triples against them. Yesterday, while the whole world, including me, had looked at the first three tests and pronounced "Lara's golden run has ended", he shut us all up with a magnificent triple hundred, scoring 227 runs in the day (incidentally, one run less than Sehwag's first day overnight score at Multan :)). While the triple comes in a dead rubber match, it does not take anything away from the splendid performance.
He is 313* overnight, off 426 deliveries, having played what was apparently a chanceless innings. Again I curse the TEN Sports wrangle for having robbed me of an opportunity to watch the masterpiece.
Now there are two questions.
The first immediate and obvious one is, will he take back his record from Matthew Hayden, who according to me, does not deserve to hold it. I sure hope he does, because I want the record to be held only by a great.
The second question, is one about which I forgot to write in my Sachin post. While the world has been obsessed with the "Battle of Spinners", with both Warne and Murali neck to neck, everybody seems to have ignored the "Battle of the Geniuses".
Both Lara and Tendulkar are close to 10,000 runs in test cricket. Lara has played 187 innings, as opposed to Sachin's 183. Sachin stands on 9469, while Lara, including his 313* stands at 9570. It will be interesting to see who reaches there first.
Update: I am sorry, but I remembered later that the ODI-greedy Dalmiya has called off India's test series of Bangladesh. However West Indies will play Bangladesh in May-June. So I guess it will be Lara, because Tendulkar's innings at Pindi will be his last test innings for some months. However ti will be fun to see who gets it in lesser innings.
Anyway, fingers crossed for a Lara 400. :)
England must be wondering why must Lara keep scoring triples against them. Yesterday, while the whole world, including me, had looked at the first three tests and pronounced "Lara's golden run has ended", he shut us all up with a magnificent triple hundred, scoring 227 runs in the day (incidentally, one run less than Sehwag's first day overnight score at Multan :)). While the triple comes in a dead rubber match, it does not take anything away from the splendid performance.
He is 313* overnight, off 426 deliveries, having played what was apparently a chanceless innings. Again I curse the TEN Sports wrangle for having robbed me of an opportunity to watch the masterpiece.
Now there are two questions.
The first immediate and obvious one is, will he take back his record from Matthew Hayden, who according to me, does not deserve to hold it. I sure hope he does, because I want the record to be held only by a great.
The second question, is one about which I forgot to write in my Sachin post. While the world has been obsessed with the "Battle of Spinners", with both Warne and Murali neck to neck, everybody seems to have ignored the "Battle of the Geniuses".
Both Lara and Tendulkar are close to 10,000 runs in test cricket. Lara has played 187 innings, as opposed to Sachin's 183. Sachin stands on 9469, while Lara, including his 313* stands at 9570. It will be interesting to see who reaches there first.
Update: I am sorry, but I remembered later that the ODI-greedy Dalmiya has called off India's test series of Bangladesh. However West Indies will play Bangladesh in May-June. So I guess it will be Lara, because Tendulkar's innings at Pindi will be his last test innings for some months. However ti will be fun to see who gets it in lesser innings.
Anyway, fingers crossed for a Lara 400. :)
