The first warm up game of the Australian tour against India A ended ina tame draw at the Vidarbha Cricket Association stadium in Nagpur onMonday
Waleed Hussain19-Feb-2001The first warm up game of the Australian tour against India A ended ina tame draw at the Vidarbha Cricket Association stadium in Nagpur onMonday. The match was called off by both skippers after 12.1 mandatory overs were bowled with the Australians on 365/9 from 95.1 overs.The three day match saw 1024 runs scored on a good batting pitch. Asexpected, 21 off the 29 wickets to fall in the match were taken byspinners. Rahul Sanghvi took five in Australia’s first innings, Millercontributed with six in the India A innings and in the Australiansecond innings, eight of the nine wickets went to the spinners.The fact that spinners dominated the proceedings on both sides andeven the tailenders batted away to glory speaks volumes on thecondition of the Nagpur wicket.Resuming at 39 for one, the Australians batted confidently. The bestbatting came from Justin Langer who got a hundred. Langer took 52minutes to open his account, after which he went about plundering runsall around the ground. He scored 115 off 157 balls with 17 hits to thefence and two over it. Ricky Ponting reached his second half-centuryof the match. He scored 68 off 95 balls with ten boundaries and onesix. Ponting and Langer added 149 runs off 22.2 overs for the fourthwicket.On Sunday, Damien Martyn was off the field for well over 200 minutes.He was not allowed to bat until the fifth Australian wicket fell. MarkWaugh and Shane Warne substituted for him on Sunday. He scored a halfcentury in the last session of the day before he was bowled round hislegs by Hemang Badani. Martyn’s 53 was compiled off 81 balls with nineboundaries.Balaji Rao picked up three for 100 and Harbajan Singh bagged three for81. Laxman and Badani picked up a wicket each. Play was called offafter Damien Fleming was dismissed. Fleming was caught by Laxman atslip off a wide delivery sent down by Balaji Rao.The Australians fly to Mumbai tonight and will be playing the secondwarmup game against the Ranji Trophy champions Mumbai at the CCI fromFebruary 22.