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3rd Test: Australia wins Sydney Test (scorecard), South Africa won Test Series 2-1.. T20 & ODI series follows.
Current Cricket Series : South Africa vs Australia, West Indies vs New Zealand. Coming Up : India in NZ 2009.

Filed under IndvAus Adelaide 2008

Last time India played at Adelaide - they won after conceding over 500 runs in the first innings. Last time Australia played at Adelaide - they too won after giving away 500+ 1st innings score to England in that Ashes 2005 test match.

So, when India score 309 for loss of 5 wickets at the end of Day 1 today, we also know there's plenty of cricket yet to be played in this 2008 India vs Australia 4th test match. Trick is the dip between 1st Innings and 2nd Innings scores made at the Oval shaped cricket ground. West Indies once won here by one run, in 1993. Today, it was a Sachin Tendulkar day at Adelaide Oval which was the home ground of Sir Don Bradman. Coming down the track to Brad Hogg, driving on the up & slog sweeping - Tendulkar looked invincible and took the linking of aussie spinner. In fact - Brad Hogg's bowling produced 54 runs for Tendulkar in this innings so far..

In the morning, Anil Kumble won the crucial toss and elected to bat. Out comes Irfan Pathan as opening partner to Virendra Sehwag who faced the first ball. Sehwag normally gets the non-striking end at the start of an innings but today he was protective of his inexperienced partner. but no change in his batting style - Sehwag smashed half century before the 20th over of the day and by the time he got out (off a no ball by brett lee), he had set up the platform for Sachin Tendulkar.

Early loss of Dravid and Ganguly didn't bother the Mumbai batsman who found inform Laxman at the other end. Result - 126 run partnership off just 193 balls as Australian bowlers tried to slow down the over rate. They bowled only 86 overs in the day, instead of using the extra half an hour towards the close of Day 1 of this India vs Australia fourth test match.

India vs Australia : End of Day 1 scores
Ind : 309 for 5 in 86 overs.
Sehwag 63(90), Pathan 9, Dravid 18,
Ganguly 7, Laxman 51, Dhoni 6*,
Tendulkar 124* (172b, 10x4 3x6).

Day 1 Notes
**Rahul Dravid's wife - Vijeta (with their son), was there at Adelaide Oval stands watching him bat.. having watched most of Dravid's International career - I don't recall Vijeta coming to stadium to watch Dravid bat, but today might be the case of Rahul looking to to past his 10,000th runs. before the start of this test match - Dravid had 9891 career runs.
**It was a Sachin Tendulkar day, hands down. Master Blaster, apart from scoring his 39th test match century - also become the only second Indian batsman to score over 1000 runs in Australia. First was VVS Laxman. Both batsman average over 59 while batting in Australia, although this 2007-08 series is 4th tour for Tendulkar and 3rd for Laxman.
**Sticking to Tendulkar, he now has scored 500 runs in this test series, which is, strangely, the first time he has ever scored this many runs against any test team in one series! and now that he's getting closer to Brain Lara's record of most test match runs in career (11953), we might see a even hungrier Sachin in days to come..

Masha-allah : what a cricketer

Preview : Who's best in tests, Adelaide to test

Day 1 : Century No. 39 for Sachin Tendulkar

Day 2 : India put substantial total on board

Day 3 : India pushes : Australia resists : Draw pops up!

Day 4 - India : Australia : Draw = 2:8:90.

Australia win series, India win hearts