Sehwag sets up intriguing final day

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CHENNAI, Dec 14 (Cricinfo): For four days this Test has bubbled up and it finally burst into life on the fourth evening as Virender Sehwag pummelled an exhilarating 83, giving India an audacious start to chasing a daunting 387 for victory. Most of this match has been spent marvelling at the concentration of Andrew Strauss, who earlier in the day became the tenth England batsman to score twin hundreds but his innings, as well as Paul Collingwood's resolute 108, were quickly forgotten amid Sehwag's 68-ball onslaught. Rattled, the visitors were only calmed by a late Graeme Swann strike who trapped, crucially, Sehwag.
England didn't quite know what had hit them after Kevin Pietersen confidently declared on 311 for 9 - following a curiously negative afternoon session - as Sehwag and Gautham Gambhir added 117 in 22 overs. Even that marked a notable deceleration from the race-away start that saw the run-rate nudging double figures for the first few overs. The law of averages suggested India's top-order wouldn't suffer two consecutive collective failures and clear intent was shown to make up for their first innings failure. The target remains a long way off, but the final two hours have changed the feeling of the match.
The best crowd of the game found their voices and cheered each Sehwag boundary as if it was the winning stroke. Within the first five overs he crashed seven fours and a six, upper-cut over third man to send Pietersen scurrying for bowling changes: he had used his main five by the 15th over. To put Sehwag's barrage in context, England managed just eight fours in the 54 overs they faced on the fourth day.
Sehwag batted like a man possessed, refusing to let any bowler settle. He picked up two boundaries off James Anderson's first over, and was soon using Steve Harmison's natural pace and bounce to his advantage, although one flashing cut was palmed away by Alastair Cook when he was on 26. The problem is they come so quickly.
India 241 and 131 for 1 (Sehwag 83, Gambhir 41*) need another 256 runs to beat England 316 and 311 for 9 dec (Strauss 108, Collingwood 108, Zaheer 3-40).