India vs West Indies, 27 Jan, Chennai
Robin Uthappa, Gautam Gambhir, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid,
Yuvraj Singh, Dinesh Karthik, Suresh Raina, Ajit Agarkar,
Ramesh Powar, Anil Kumble & Sreesanth
and we are just 2 months away from the biggest cricket show on the planet, and the deadline for announcing the Indian team for the Cricket World Cup is 13th February, just eighteen days away.
Is Dilip Vengsarkar and his selector's team really serious about the possibility of Tendulkar/Sehwag/Ganguly possibly not opening the Indian innings? Does a just-returned-to-the-team Saurav Ganguly really need a break? His being a certainty for the World Cup has less to do with his form than others being out of form. Why does Dravid not need a rest? Shouldn't he be the most fatigued of the lot? Do the Indian selectors have the guts or the gumption to drop Harbhajan and go for Powar? Will VVS Laxman miss the bus again, why?
Surprisingly it's the team which is 0-2 down that looks more settled. Let's hope that we don't let go of the confidence that has come with the wins at Cuttack & Nagpur. Indian cricket needs that, and for god's sake, some stability too. The time for experiments is up, long back actually.
****
Tune into Neo Sports at 0930 hrs GMT for the live coverage of the match ( or Doordarshan for a 7 minute dealyed coverage) : India vs West Indies, 27th January 2007, M A Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai
****
Likely West Indies Team: ( as per Cricinfo)
1 Chris Gayle, 2 Shivnarine Chanderpaul, 3 Brian Lara (if fit), 4 Marlon Samuels, 5 Dwayne Bravo, 6 Runako Morton, 7 Dwayne Smith, 8 Dinesh Ramdin (wk), 9 Ian Bradshaw, 10 Daren Powell, 11 Jerome Taylor.
****
A suprising tidbit: Till date, India has played just 5 one-day matches at Chepauk. That seems too few for an important centre like Chennai!! For the record, India has won and lost 2 apiece, while one game ended without a result. It's a high scoring ground, so you can expect a run-feast on the morrow. India's lowest team score at Chennai has been 269 and the Indian batsmen have a very healthy average of 32 plus.
Posts
2 comments:
we managed to equal our lowest total on chepauk, when i though we should be challenging our highest ever..just goes on to show how critical our old brigade is (primarily dada here), and how much we'll suffer once this generation of indian batsmen retire...
and however much i love them, i am not sure laxman and kumble fit in...
am myself not very sure about laxman but i think outside of the subcontinent, i'd rather have laxman batting for me than raina..kumble i think definitely deserves a place. I think he's a very good one-day spinner..the best one though was the tainted nikhil chopra. any clue, what happened of him?
Post a Comment