NOTTINGHAM, July 31: Indian captain Rahul Dravid praised paceman Zaheer Khan after the tourists won the second Test against England on Tuesday. India won by seven wickets on the fifth morning at Trent Bridge to take a 1-0 lead in the three-match series. Left-arm seamer Zaheer took nine wickets in the match, including figures of five for 75 in England's second innings.
“Zaheer was the star of our bowling,” Dravid told reporters.
“He showed what a leading bowler must do and what we expect. In conditions where he was asked to put up his hand he did that.
“He led, the other two boys (R.P. Singh and Shanthakumaran Sreesanth) are really young and on the first day, when we won a good toss, Zaheer stood up.
“Yesterday (Monday) afternoon when the game was in the balance, he took the game by the scruff of the neck and really delivered. That's what good fast bowlers do, that's what match-winners do and I think he was a match-winner for us in this game.”Dravid said Sreesanth, who was fined 50 percent of his match fee for needlessly shoulder barging England captain Michael Vaughan on Monday, could learn from Zaheer.
“He has a great example in Zaheer Khan and, if he needs to learn from anyone, he just needs look at what Zaheer's done in this test match for us,” Dravid said.
“He has had controlled aggression. Zaheer has been as aggressive as anyone else without going over the top and just sticking to performing and getting wickets.
“Sree is a talented bowler, young and a bit excitable. He is going to learn along the way. It's part of our responsibility to ensure he learns.”
Meanwhile, Vaughan apologised to Zaheer for the jelly bean controversy said incident had nothing to with England's defeat.
Zaheer reacted angrily to England putting jelly beans on the pitch while he was batting on Sunday evening.
“It's an incident that has been blown out of proportion,” Vaughan told reporters. “A few jelly beans were left on the floor by the stumps at a drinks interval as we got a wicket.
“If it offended Zaheer in any way we apologise for that. But there were no jelly beans thrown from the slip cordon.
“It's not the reason why we've lost a game of cricket, because of some jelly beans. We just didn't apply ourselves as well as we could have done with the bat. We were probably 60 or 70 runs light in the first and second innings.”
Vaughan said England should have scored a total nearer 260 in the first innings rather than the 198 they managed in bowler-friendly conditions.
Even in the second innings, when he scored 124, Vaughan hoped another 80 runs could have given India a testing chase on the final day. Instead they required only 73 for victory.
“I felt we had a chance of posting 150 to 180 and we all know that chasing that target, as we saw against Australia (when England won by three wickets in 2005) can sometimes be tricky.
That game was in the back of my mind.”—Reuters