Ground Report

Indian cricket team led by Anil Kumble has gone to Australia for a test series comprising 4 tests and 7 one day internationals.The interesting aspect of the series is that we hope to win the series with our gang of four, Tendulkar,Dravid,Ganguly and Laxman, their age being 34,35,34 and 33 respectively and of course they are at the twilight of their career and they may not figure in another series.Anil Kumble,with a recent win of test series by 1-0 against our neighbour Pakistan, hope to continue the trend against the fancied Australians also.Will it be possible.Steve Waugh has already began the scything comment and attack upon the Indians.His view dwells upon the batting prowess of the gang of four and question our ability to take 20 wickets considering our present crop of bowlers.We have two established spinners in Anil Kumble and Harbajan and our pace attack consisting of Pathan, Zaheerkhan,R.P.Singh,Munaf Patel and two novices in Pankaj Singh and Ishant Sharma who have hardly any International exposure.One of our strike bowlers, Sreesanth, beset with shoulder injury problem, has not been selected. He is a right foil to deal with the sledging Australians, to counter aggression  by agression.But unfortunately he is not there.But as Steve Waugh said the tour begins with only one practice match and the first test at MCG at Melbourn,which favours spinners.Had we begun the tour at the bouncy wicket Perth, of course , the fate of our tour would be entirely different.Thank God.Australians also have their own problems.Though they boast of having the pace attack of Bret Lee,Johnson,Stuart Clark and Tait, at over 150 km per hour, speed, they lack the nagging accuracy of Glen Macrath and the Spin Wizard Shane Warne.In short they don’t have a good spinner in the absence of  Stuart Macgill, who is having fitness problems.Therefore,we reasonably believe that we can repeat our perfomance of 2003-2004 series that we had in Austarlia under Sourav Ganguly.Let us hope for the best.