The highly anticipated test series between India and Australia begins in a week’s time. Much has been said and written about and the teams displayed their strengths in two practice matches. So, what lies ahead?

The Australians have come minus a specialist spin bowler this time. Shane Warne had a mastery of sorts on the Indian spinning wickets but his only tryst with Indian pitches is now limited to training Rajasthan Royals. Australians had brought Bryce McGain in their line-up but he had to be sent back owing to a shoulder injury.

Now Jason Krejza remains to fill in the spot of a specialist spinner but after being smothered ruthlessly in the second practice match, Australia have a reason to worry about. The Australian skipper Ricky Ponting’s test record on Indian soil is another cause of concern. Ponting has an average of 12 runs in 8 matches and he will certainly have a lot of pressure on him to perform.

The Indians are up on confidence level. Tendulkar is back in team after recovering from his injury and his comeback will work wonders to boost the team’s morale. Harbhajan and Kumble had some mean bowling spells in the Irani Trophy which goes as an alarm to the visitors about the razor-sharp spin attack in offing for them. Piyush Chawla bowled excellently in the last practice match while his counterpart Irfan is doing equally well with bat and ball both.

Yuvraj, Jaffer and Rohit Sharma delivered brilliant knocks in the Hyderabad practice match. Their exclusion from the squad for the first two tests can be a substantial loss for India. On the other hand, Ganguly faired miserably in the match against New Zealand A and he better perform well if he intends to stay in the team. Badrinath’s inclusion had rose questions at the time of selection and his poor performance in the practice match has put him under the scanner.

The Indian Test Captain Kumble appears relaxed after the second practice match resulted in a draw. In his opinion, this is the best time to beat Australia as they are their weakest best in recent times. Former skipper Ganguly , however, has cautioned that the outcome of the series cannot be predicted on the basis of a practice match.

Cricket360 opines that Australia isn’t the World Champion for nothing and India is in a very good shape at the moment. May the best team win!

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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