India set to beat Bangladesh

May 26: Towards the end of the second day of the second test against Bangladesh, India has piled a good score and is in a better position than the hosts. In the match, being played at Shere Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur (Dhaka) today, Indian batsmen have put on a sizeable score for Bangladeshiâ??s. Great knock was played by Jaffer, Karthick, Dravid and Tendulkar. Jaffer scored the highest individual score of 138 and retired to the pavilion. Karthick scored 129 runs, Dravid 129 runs and Tendulkar added 122 more, without giving his wicket. The great performance by the batsmen helped India to amass a huge total of 610/3 in their first innings.

Bangladesh in their reply was struggling at 58 for 5, when the play was called off for the day. Earlier India declared their innings on 610 for 3.

Indian pacers, especially Zaheer Khan, did a great job with their bowling. Zaheer took three wickets of the five wickets lost in the Bangladeshâ??s innings. The other two wickets were taken one each by R.P.Singh and the comeback man Anil Kumble.

Zaheer gave a perfect start to India when Javed Omar was caught by Dinesh Karthik of the first ball. R.P.Singh striked in the next over and dismissed the skipper Habibul Bashar, who was caught behind by Dhoni for four.

The onslaught continued and in the third over Zaheer striked twice, this time sending Shahriar Nafees and Mohammad Ashraful back to pavilions in two consecutive balls. While Nafees was bowled, Ashraful was dismissed for lbw of the first ball and left without scoring a run. With the dismissal of Ashraful the Bangladeshi innings floundered with just 7 runs and 4 of its batsmen out.

When the score reached 40 Anil Kumble had Rajin Saleh caught by Jaffer to leave Bangladesh with a mountain to climb. With half of its batsmen back in the pavilion, the Bangladesh team sees a Herculean task before them to avoid the follow-on target of 411.

At the end of the day Saqibul Hasan and Mohammad Sharif were struggling for Bangladesh innings.