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Tuesday, January 3, 2017

David Warner scores century before lunch at Sydney

In a tour game in England, Krish Srikkanth achieved it – a century before lunch on the opening day .. .. quite a feat, in a World of lusty hitters..  Virender Sehwag came close to achieving it – but perhaps unmindful of feats, he did not !!

David Warner has just achieved it at Sydney today - a Test century before the lunch break in the third Test between Australia and Pakistan at the SCG -- and the first man ever to do it in Australia.  Just after midday, Warner had raced along to 80 not out. Ten minutes before the scheduled lunch break at 12:30pm, he was sitting on 95 not out off just 78 balls. Before this day,  feat had only been accomplished four times in Test cricket — by Victor Trumper in Manchester in 1902, Charles Macartney in Leeds in 1926, Sir Donald Bradman in Leeds in 1930 and Majid Khan in Karachi 1976.

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.

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