Bangalore: Former Indian cricket Lalchand Rajput, who said he was not at all surprised with Zaheer Khan’s fiver of the second day of the third Test match against New Zealand, insisted that a 400-plus total was impossible to get on the this wicket for the hosts in the fourth innings.
"I am not at all surprised by Zaheer’s performance today because he is definitely one of the best left arm seamer in the world. Probably if he had not taken those five wickets on this wicket, I would have been really surprised but now I happy he has put India in a position of strength.
Also a 400-plus total will be impossible to chase on this wicket because the pitch will surely break on the fourth and fifth day and there is still lot of juice in the wicket for the seamers to exploit on the third day," Rajput told Cricketnext.com on Saturday.
"From this position, a lead of 182 runs in the first innings, India cannot lose this Test match and I am sure they are well set for a historic 2-0 series win in New Zealand.
"Now coming back to Indian bowling, Harbhajan Singh will play a pivotal role in the second innings as he was turning the ball quite appreciably on the second day itself and is known to be deadly in the second innings while both Ishant (Sharma) and Munaf (Patel) too will have a role to play here," the former Indian opener added.
"On a wicket like this, a team which scores 375 runs on the opening day seldom loses the match unless and until they bat really badly in the second innings," Rajput pointed out.
Unconcerned about Virender Sehwag’s early dismissal in the second innings, Rajput said, the Delhi opener had already played his part in the Test match.
"See Viru’s role is to score runs quickly and put the team in a sound position. It is an expected fact that he will go after the bowling whenever he steps on to the ground. In fact his 48 in the first innings has already given the team that they were looking for and I am not worried about his early dismissal in the second innings because he has already done his job.
I won’t be surprised if he is asked to play the role of a second spinner when the Kiwis bat for the second time," Rajput observed.
"If the Indian batsmen can bat through tomorrow and set a target of 400 plus runs, it should be curtains for the hosts as any team would find it difficult to bat out the last two days on this wicket, which is still quite lively and will certainly break as the match progresses," he added
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