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Runs of the mill
The Lahore Test saw more runs piled up on both sides of the scorecard than is healthy for any batsman?s self-esteem ? never mind a bowler?s.
The Lahore Test saw more runs piled up on both sides of the scorecard than is healthy for any batsman’s self-esteem — never mind a bowler’s. If Pakistan’s mammoth first innings total of 679 for 7 sounded like a bill for a kebab platter meal for seven, the Indian score of 410 for 1 sounded even worse — or better, if you went by Virender Sehwag’s touching statement after the fourth day’s play about “they lost seven wickets, we haven’t lost a single wicket”. At the end of the day (rain-interrupted five days, actually), the Lahore Test was really a treat for number-crunchers, recorders of records and excitable statisticians.
The problem, of course, was that the pitch at the Gaddafi Stadium was flatter than Thomas Friedman’s world or the tyre of a forgotten Padmini Fiat rotting behind the house as junk. Test cricket, once colourfully described as an invention to give Englishmen some conception of eternity, has been saved from the valium route by sporting pitches that favour bowlers and class encounters like the latest Ashes and other series.
At Lahore, however, cricket resembled a game of darts where the whole dartboard and the wall beyond was bull’s eye. Great batting, sure. But great spectator sport? Despite Sehwag, nope.
