Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Michae Clarke left the mind games for his teammates and his followers of camp. The two made statements politically correct before Boxing Day test.
If Dhoni scrupulously maintained that he is worried about his team's strengths and weaknesses than worrying about opponents, Clarke is a little closer to say that he has the ammo to take 20 wickets at the Melbourne Cricket Ground to win the first test.
The two tried to not harm the other side and have demonstrated the spirit of Yuletide before the first ball of the series is scrolled. Both captains have vowed to be competitive and fight on the field without spoiling the spirit of the game.
Clarke said his side would be aggressive without exceeding the limits while Dhoni reciprocated by saying his side would play tough cricket but avoid the bad blood between the two teams that almost destroyed the midway tour four years ago.
Thus, there is some understanding on the rules of the game, now the Cricket merits and demerits. By all accounts, India look far superior on paper. Everyone seems to agree that this team India is perhaps the strongest and the wonders of breath even if ever Australians sent an eleven such weaker.
No contemporary cricket test team can boast of four exceptionally qualified and men celebrated as Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sehwag V.V.S. Laxman, juggling and Zaheer Khan, not to mention Dhoni, easily the most Captain unfazed. Who is responsible for half of the side.
Take openers Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir, among them have 11,571 runs on 136 tests, the former having two triple centuries in his 22 and the bed the latter in its nine. On the other hand, Australian openers David Warner and Ed Cowan have two tests.
Warner has come a long way from a batter twenty20 explosives to a dreaded player, having held the bat test in just his second test. More importantly, Sehwag can win a game on their own and Australians are expecting his teammate of Delhi Daredevils Warner would do it for them.
The statistics of Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman can unnerve any attack and all three have phenomenal record in Australia, no matter who may not have done very well at the MCG. The three are on their last visit and they know that there's nothing like winning the series for the first time below. The three have said loud and clear that they should be judged as they still are, not as they are old.
Australians are tired of waiting for Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey bat as the Indian trio and win matches. The two faithful with more than 17,000 cumulative runs are on borrowed time. One more failure and your time is up.
The Australians have already started rebuilding the team, bringing in left-handed Cowan on 29 for his test debut. A protégé of the late Peter Roebuck, born in New South Wales went to the Cranbrook school in Sydney, where he came under the wings of the former captain of Somerset, who taught English and was a coach of cricket there. He moved to Tasmania three years ago and began scoring heavily this season, a coincidence, from the day that Roebuck died. He hit four hundreds in four games, including one against the Indians in Canberra and forced their way into the test eleven.
If the batting is a problem for Australia, India's concern is bowling. Australians are heavily depending on the raw pace of James Pattinson and the swing of Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus. They feel a little green in field can encourage the pace men to extract bounce and movement, forgetting fit Zaheer and Ishant Sharma and Umesh Yadav can exploit the conditions as well as Australians. Ravichandran Ashwin of high, slender, too, can use the jump with his action.
The Indians are playing the same four pitches played on 2007-08 and they know what is on offer at the MCG, Sydney Cricket Ground, WACA in Perth and Adelaide Oval.
Don't forget, India won in Perth and if the arbitration had been exempt from errors would have won the series 2-1 rather than the opposite. Come to think about it, in 2003-04, the leaders five hitters Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman scored big hundreds and had been a little more daring could have won this series, too. They can do it again, this time more aggressively.
By ticking the boxes, the Indians can feel well in many respects, but that will count only if they click as a team.
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