Having played a major role
in Australia's win in Melbourne by scoring a rapid century, Warner doubled down
with another intimidatory batting effort against bowling that mixed the
presentable with the ordinary on a blameless SCG pitch for the New Year's Test.
Matt Renshaw provided the sturdy counterpoint at the other end as Warner joined
Victor Trumper, Charles Macartney, Sir Donald Bradman and Majid Khan as the
only other men to do the trick in the very first session of a Test. Majid was
the most recent batsman to get there, making his century against New Zealand in
Karachi in 1976-77.
After Steven Smith won the
toss for Australia and announced two changes to the Melbourne team, Steve
O'Keefe and the debutant Hilton Cartwright, Warner rocketed away with a volley
of boundaries in the first two overs of the match, the second of which was
bowled by one of Pakistan's inclusions, Imran Khan. From there it seemed only a
matter of Warner keeping his wicket intact and getting enough of the strike,
two tasks he performed without too much trouble as barely a ball beat the bat.
If you are following Ranji –
in the Semi finals at Rajkot, Mumbai were Mumbai 171 for 4 (Suryakumar 73,
Waghela 48) trailing Tamil Nadu’s 305 (Indrajith 64, Shankar 50, Gandhi 50,
Nayar 4-66, Thakur 4-75) by 134 runs.. .. will they make it and shut Tamil Nadu
out of Finals is the Q. Away in Nagpur -
Jharkhand trail by 176 runs with 5 wickets remaining in the 1st innings in the
other Semis.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
3rd Jan 2017.
