Hello Readers, We know many of you might have followed 4 day match against Board President XI in Hyderabad. The match ended in draw but there were more smiles in Indian side and worries in Oz’s camp.Had the selection been done on 2nd Oct’08 instead of 1st for the early two tests, the picture would look different. Only player who’ve been picked up in Test squad S.Badrinath failed in both innings. Rise and shine time for Virat Kohli & Rohit Sharma in first innings as they both hit 105 each to put BP XI in strong position. With the likes of Kumble and Bhajji as a spin attack very little chances are left for other spinners to get into probable for selection. Yet Piyush Chawla & Pragyan Ojha bowled well against Oz’s and shared 8 wickets between them to bundle out Aussies cheaply in first innings. Punter’s bad patch in Indian soil continued. Only brave innings was played by Mike Hussey who scored century and some batting braveness for Stuart Clarke in lower order. Second innings brings more smiles for BP XI as captain Yuvraj Singh made century while Jaffer missed the same with 7 runs.
Aussies really wouldn’t have expected the worst news in the form of there main attacking spinner Bryce McGain being ruled out of entire series due to shoulder injury. The other spinner Kreja who also came with dream of making Test debut alongside McGain now has real chance to be in playing eleven. Aussies have also called all-rounder Cameron White who has performed really well in domestic circuit for them to join the squad. His leg spin can be bit handy apart from giving strength to batting lower down the order.
With just 3 days to go for the first test in Bangalore (now Bangaluru) playing conditions look pretty much similar to what we had in Hyderabad during practice match.Looking at the weather conditions captain Kumble will certainly be playing with 2 seamers and 2 spinners with long batting line up we have.
Shams & Wags’s probable XI for the Test are-
India – Anil Kumble(Capt.),V.Sehwag, G.Gambhir, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar,Sourav Ganguly,VVS Laxman, M S Dhoni (VC & wk),Harbhajan Singh,Zaheer Khan,Ishant Sharma,Munaf Patel (12th man).
Australia – Ricky Ponting (Capt.), M Hayden, Phil Jacques, S Katich, Michael Clarke, Mike Hussey, B Haddin, Brett Lee, Stuart Clarke, M Johnson, Kreja, Watson (12th man)
Article By Shams & Wags
4 comments:
"Miles and smiles"....nice caption for the amazing article you have written....is Sham's contributing anything here?....lol i really doubt...well the dream team you guys have mentioned is a great combination of our old experienced players and some young blood too....would like to read separate articles from both of you..it would be fun having a battleground here too just like our cricket...lol....
(Thoughts of an evil mind)
Shams has written this article for sure:-)....there is a sense of style in shams writing which is unmatched.
Good going shams...hopefully we'll see the fruits of the IPL which has thrown a lot of domestic players like Virat Kohli into the limelight.
What will be interesting to note is whether India can start the series by winning the first test. More often than not, India invariably creates a do-or-die situation and builds up tremendous, unnecessary pressure. Sometimes I wonder if it is to satiate the hunger of cricket crazy fans or to support the beting industry - because in either case the more the odds, the bullish are the returns!
Winning the first match of the series is akin to batting first I guess, now one needs to defend and the gameplans are very different. I don't recall very often India being in this situation though.
Shams & Wags, it'll be interesting bit of trivia to analyse when all have India led the series from the first match and what have the results been!
Cheers and great blog...
Great blog. Good going Shams & Wags!Will keep following your blog closely through the series.Cheers!
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