Draw: First Test day 5

Australia 430 and 6/228 dec (S Watson 41, I Sharma 3/40) drew with India 360 and 4/177 (S Tendulkar 49) at Bangalore.

Slow play and bad light combined to make the match a draw.

419.5 overs were bowled today. If the weather and the players' determination had permitted (and perhaps the umpires and the match referee had insisted that) the scheduled 450 overs - a modest target by the standards of anyone who'd followed cricket in the 20th century - be bowled there might have been a result. Australia made most of the running (walking is a more apt term) but its bowling lacked sufficient penetration to dismiss India in the second innings on a pitch which looked brittle but which somehow did not deconstruct like the global financial markets have done recently.

Perhaps the declaration might have come sooner, though the spectre of a blinder from Virender Sehwag or Sachin Tendulkar (or another) may have hovered over the Australian team management and clouded its thinking. And so, the match which had in the first days demonstrated some of the best qualities of Test cricket, ended with a whimper.



Scorecard