Captaincy must be a hard job. I can’t say for sure because I have never captained a side. But when you have a reasonably big first innings score and then if the opposition gives you the reply in kind and if the wicket is its flat best, you don’t want to be the bowling side’s captain. But that was where Chaminda was at the end of Day 1.
But the second day morning opened well for Singapore. After a few pokes and strokes here and there, Malaysia committed a triplet of hara-kiris and found themselves staring down the barrel at 87/4. Arun struck twice in a couple of overs by cleaning up Suriya and the danger-man Eszrafiq. At the other end, Dharmi foxed the aggressive Rakesh by bowling him around the legs. From a relative safety at the beginning of the day, Malaysia stuttered into danger zone pretty fast and there was a sense of inevitability around the happenings at that time.
In walked Suresh Navaratnam and along with the limping Anuar, the duo built a rollicking stand of century-plus which was as much entertaining as it was educating. It was entertaining as Suresh and Anuar took the fight to the Singapore star spinner Dharmi by repeatedly carting him over the infield and sometimes out of the ground as well. It was educating, on how one could score runs at a fair clip without ugly slogging. Finally, when Suresh was plumbed by Shoib, Malaysia was in relative safety. Anuar soon followed by playing on and before long Malaysia was tottering at 244/8. But the diminutive keeper from Malaysia – Shafiq, played some audacious paddle sweeps, inside-out cover drives, and along with Darvin ensured that Malaysia ended up just 27 runs short of Singapore.
If Malaysia’s collective batting helped the cause including important contributions from the youngsters, for Singapore, the letdown was the overall lack of teeth in the bowling. The pacemen were plagued by no-balls, the spinners were not too tight and thankfully, there weren’t any important catches dropped!
Definitely, one could sense that the Malaysians were on the high, after almost matching Singapore blow-for-blow in the first outing.
The game plan for Singapore was pretty simple; put enough runs on the board utilizing the 46 overs remaining in Day #2. There were talks about when to declare and what the ideal score before declaration.
Trainer Swee Heng tells – or should I say, repeats ad nauseam, that sports is about repetition. You repeat good things, you perform well. You repeat bad things; you suffer. I don’t think that I am not as articulate as Swee Heng, but dear reader, you would have got the gist. Yes, the bad habits of the first innings repeated for Singapore. Chetan found mid-on with un-erring accuracy after spanking a straight drive that would have cut any limb on its way. Glenn did the gentleman by “walking” after edging a swinging beauty from Krishnamurthy. Sagar, once again flattered to deceive, leaving Singapore in familiar territory.
After some initial jitters against Suresh, Christopher and skipper Chaminda, they settled down nicely to stitch a useful partnership. Chaminda showed glimpses of his class, when he thrashed the danger-man Suresh repeatedly through the covers and hooked his bouncers to chase him out of the attack.
When Chaminda and Christopher were batting, it looked as if batting was the easiest job around. Apart from the single blemish of a dropped catch at point off Suresh, Christopher did enough justice to his talent and scored a brisk half-century. He probably played the shot-of-the match, when he square cut-drove Suresh for a boundary to open his account. The shot was pure poetry in that the ball sped over the lush-green carpet of Kinrara Oval with that sweet swishing sound. And I loved that fluorescent pink grip of his bat!
The introduction of spin from both sides, slowed down proceedings and just when it looked that the pair would bat through the day, the first of the many insanities happened. Two short of his chance-less half-century, Chaminda decided to rush down the wicket to dispatch rolly-polly Eszrafiq to Sri Lanka. But the youngster kept the ball wide and little Shafiq claimed his second dismissal of the innings by effecting the stumping in a flash.
Soon after, Christopher proved his loyalty to his skipper by getting dismissed in exactly the same manner. You might think that cold, flu and other ailments are contagious. But in reality even bad habits are contagious. Go no further than that dismissal for proof of this axiom. This brought the two left-handers: Buddhika Mendis and first-innings hero Munish Arora to the wicket. Munish was obviously nursing a bad back and Singapore was just 170 runs ahead with half the side back in the hut.
With about five overs to go for stumps, Eszrafiq drifted one into Buddhika and bent it away. The natural angle and the spin of the ball, kissed the outer edge of the tentative Buddhika bat en-route to first slip where skipper Rohan Vishnu accepted the catch gleefully.
The day ended tantalizingly balanced with a slight tilt towards Malaysia. Singapore was ahead by about 180+ runs with only four second innings wickets in hand.
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