Clash of Titans

Its been a long time since i signed up for blogging. I remembered it suddenly today morning and i thought i should write something today. Today is a holiday for Ayudha pooja and sadly i am at office to fix a critical bug (or rather i do not have anything else to do staying away from office). It does nt mean i became a workaholic. I am just catching up with the laid back vacation i had last week :) . Now that i ve done with the stupid bug and kindled by the blog entry from Bharathwaj am writing this post.

The India-Australia test series is the much awaited tournament for us Quackers. The first test starts in Bangalore tomorrow and we have booked tickets for the third day. The Indian team, quite unusually start as favorites because of the fighting spirit they showed Down under during VB series. Here goes my preview of the first test.

Team India - The Indian team would be thinking to settle the scores and give back some thrashing which they got last time aussies visited India.
The team would want to give a good farewell to Ganguly.
Viru is the man aussies should watch out. He is so unpredictable and his batting in Lanka should boost his confidence. Dravid looks to regain some of his form which was evident from the domestic performances. The weakness in the batting department would still be the middle order. Tendulkar is recovering from injury and will start tomorrow's match without match practice. Although he is a master, this might be a crack which aussies would want to break open. Lets see how the aging middle order performs. I hope they fire for one last time.

The bowling looks good wid ishanth, bhajji, RP. The weekness would be the captain. He has lost his sting. We saw him bowling half volleys in sri lanka which is not going to help him or the team any way. Ishanth would be looking forward to maintain his superiority with Ponting. I think the Ish-punter fight would click better than bhajji-punter.

Team Australia - These guys look better prepared although they lack experience. My pick of the batsmen would be Hussey,Katich and Clarke. These guys can stay at the crease and trouble the indian bowlers. The IPL experience would be helping some of them for sure. Hussey played a wonderful game with the chennai super kings.

The bowling looks good although not balanced. They have quality fast bowlers with Lee spearheading. The lack of spin might not cause terrible problems atleast in B'lore as the pitch is known as a dull one.

My pick of players to watch out for during the first test are Ishant(bowled beautifully and batted like a batsman last year in bangalore), Viru, Hussey, Lee.

About the weather, hope it holds up good for the 5 days. We had some rain for the past couple of days.

Can't help bangalore pitch. Hope it stays alive at least till i see the match on 3rd day.

Waiting for a thrilling series.