New Delhi: Team India openers Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir have testing times ahead of them as both are under a lot of pressure to get back into form before the tough tour to Pakistan.
In the Ranji trophy match against Railways both of them fell for identical scores of 15.
While Gambhir was all at sea against the Railways attack, Sehwag once again fell trying to hit the opposition out of the ground.
Incidentally, both were dismissed by Test squad discard Murali Karthik who went on to take five wickets.
It is very likely that he will pick up many more as the match goes on and the wicket gets worse as already 17 wickets have fallen on the very first day.
Railways were bowled out for just 77 runs in their first innings while the hosts Delhi in reply were 117 runs for the fall of seven wickets.
However, other Pakistan-bound opener, Wasim Jaffer looked to be in very good nick as he stroked a superb 162 for Mumbai against Tamil Nadu.
The 27-year-old right-hander, who strangely went in at one down, scored his second century of the championship this season.
Mumbai's batting revolved around the tall Jaffer with the century coming justy a day after he was named in the Test squad as the third opener for the Test series against Pakistan.
But with Sunday's innings he made a strong case for himself for the opening slot alongside Virender Sehwag.
Jaffer though was lucky in some respect as he was caught off no-balls on 14 and 111.
When Jaffer was finally out he had already accumulated 519 runs from four Ranji matches this season apart from the 309 he has accumulated from three Duleep Trophy ties.
Finally his place in the Indian team cannot be questioned at all.
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