India lost the first cricket test played at MCG with Australia by a huge margin of 337 runs and scoring below 200 runs in both the innings, 196 in the first and 161 in the second.Despite of boasting and having a world class batting line-up with our old war horses like Sachin Tendulkar, Dravid,VVS.Laxman and Saurav Ganguly, still we miserably failed atleast to manage a face saving draw in the test.
The Melbourn cricket pitch was slow and bouncy and suited more to our players than Australia and there was nothing to worry about in the pitch.As pointed out by Ricky Ponting the MCG pitch was more suitable to the Indian style of playing and he was actually surprised at the meek surrender of the Indian batting line-up and apart from that we did not have our bowling resources to take 20 wickets in a match.
Sunil Gavaskar, one of our batting legends opined that most of our batsmen,our openers Wasim Jaffer, Sachin,VVS.Laxman were out to poor shots either chasing the outside the off stump delivery or because of defensive mindset.
Again as our former batsman,K.Srikanth put it, Rahul Dravid was at his best at only No.3 position averaging 59 runs and so he should be allowed to play at only No.3 position.Restoring the Delhi player, Virendar Sehwag in the opener’s slot made Australia think about our batting line-up.To include Sehwag, Yuvaraj Singh should necessarily be excluded from the team.
As our former player Binny put it, there is no meaning in retaining the aged players for their fame and name and all the aged players should be sacked and younger crop of players should be included and fielded in the matches.
The second cricket test between India and Australia will begin tomorrow, the 2nd, January, 2008 and the pitch report of Sydney Cricket Ground is more condusive to seamers.Therefore taking the above aspects into consideration, fielding Sehwag as a opener to partner Wasim Jaffer, demoting Dravid to No.3 slot and allowing our seamers Zaheer Khan, R.P.Singh and besides playing two spinners in Kumble and Harbajan, will be an ideal combination to field at the second test at SCG,Sydney.
Given the conditions and adopting the above changes will find India fare better in the second cricket test at SCG, Sydney,Australia.
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