Lot for us to learn from Dravid’s innings

India have just shown us why they are the number 1 Test team in the world. They played according to the blueprint for a perfect Test match.

India have just shown us why they are the number 1 Test team in the world. They played according to the blueprint for a perfect Test match.

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It has served them good measures of success in the last few years. They got us out early and then posted a huge total. That is the formula good teams use to put pressure on opposition.

It is now up to us to show how we respond.

We probably lost our way on the first day when we lost wickets in a heap. With the pitches being so good, it becomes difficult to claw your way back into the game if you have not posted a decent total.

The India line-up is so good that it has become that much more difficult to show our worth in the deciding Test.

Then you have someone like Sehwag teeing off on such a good wicket that it becomes difficult to stage a comeback. We did manage to calm down the tempo on the second day, but good batsmen rarely miss out on such pitches.

We had one more chance on the third morning. But again it was not enough. India were already pulling ahead of us and even a small collapse did not halt their march. We figured out pretty soon that it is going to be a tough scrap for us in this contest.

I think it was hats off to Rahul for batting the way he did. He batted with tremendous application. He just hit the bad balls, adjusted himself on the track and just persisted to get a big score. He has batted India into a position of strength.

The Black Caps have a lot of respect for Rahul and his batting is something that we can hopefully emulate over the next couple of days. There was something for us to learn from his innings.

We need to do what he did - just take it ball by ball instead of looking at the big picture.

Rahul showed that if you just look at the next ball and play one ball at a time, the job can be done. If we do that then we can go a long way in saving this Test match.

We go into the final two days with a lot of hopes pinned on our batsmen. If they can pick up the pieces then it will be a good end for us in this Test series. We as a team have a lot of confidence in our batting. Now, hopefully they will repay the faith.

As I said before the start of the Test, we will be judged on what we do in this game and not on the whole series. People tend to have short memories, so if we perform now, it will count more than anything else.

Go boys this is the moment, seize it. TCM