Australia tour of India 2010

What will be the outcome for for the India-Australia Tests?

  • Draw (India retains the trophy)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    6
  • Poll closed .
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

i'd like to see this line up given a go..

- Doug Bollinger
- Ben Hilfenhaus
- Peter George
- Hauritz

but of course it will never happen as there is no talk of dropping once-in-a-generation Johnson
:(
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

OhMyGodTheChips;409528 said:
I just can't believe they're talking of dropping Bollinger.

It's just pre-match gametalk. He'll play.

God, it would make me laugh if they did though. Over the hill batsmen have to prized out of the team with a crowbar well past their use-by-date, yet bowlers get 'discussed' in this manner by our management in their usual bubble.

Where the hell is the 'drop Hussey' talk?
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

Beeswax;409550 said:
It's just pre-match gametalk. He'll play.

God, it would make me laugh if they did though. Over the hill batsmen have to prized out of the team with a crowbar well past their use-by-date, yet bowlers get 'discussed' in this manner by our management in their usual bubble.

Where the hell is the 'drop Hussey' talk?

It's not so much dropping Bollinger, it's more Bollinger being unfit to play.

Hussey isn't being talked about as much because not only is he just super fit and used to it all, but he's a batsman and hasn't played half as much as Bollinger has over the past month at full speed. Bollinger has been overworked and may have picked up a couple of niggles, plus might be having trouble with jet-lag or something like that.

He will be playing, both passed fitness tests I'm presuming since there is no news on them having not.

Clarke is completely right when he says that players have to choose to play for the country before the IPL, Champions League and whatever other franchises and pointless competitions there are worldwide. Bollinger and Hussey should both have been on the plane to India when the rest of the squad did, they didn't have a choice this time because of the contractual restrictions, but they shouldn't be getting themselves into the predicament of choosing other teams over their country.

Five hours until the start of play for the first Test.
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

Boris;409570 said:
It's not so much dropping Bollinger, it's more Bollinger being unfit to play.

Hussey isn't being talked about as much because not only is he just super fit and used to it all, but he's a batsman and hasn't played half as much as Bollinger has over the past month at full speed. Bollinger has been overworked and may have picked up a couple of niggles, plus might be having trouble with jet-lag or something like that.

He will be playing, both passed fitness tests I'm presuming since there is no news on them having not.

Clarke is completely right when he says that players have to choose to play for the country before the IPL, Champions League and whatever other franchises and pointless competitions there are worldwide. Bollinger and Hussey should both have been on the plane to India when the rest of the squad did, they didn't have a choice this time because of the contractual restrictions, but they shouldn't be getting themselves into the predicament of choosing other teams over their country.

Five hours until the start of play for the first Test.

Australias inability to play and dominate quality spin will be exploited in this series. Harbhajan Singh is the key to series, he tends to lift his game against the Australians and knows that they fear him. Australia dont seem to have a plan against him and are contempt in playing defensive cricket against him. As a Indian supporter I believe that Indias weakness are against the seaming ball and believe Australia should play 4 fast bowlers with clarke, north and katich taking up the spin options.

Looking forward to this series
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

Happy;409576 said:
Australias inability to play and dominate quality spin will be exploited in this series. Harbhajan Singh is the key to series, he tends to lift his game against the Australians and knows that they fear him. Australia dont seem to have a plan against him and are contempt in playing defensive cricket against him. As a Indian supporter I believe that Indias weakness are against the seaming ball and believe Australia should play 4 fast bowlers with clarke, north and katich taking up the spin options.

Looking forward to this series

Good to see another new face around here :)

To add to Australia being unfavourable in this series is that there are no Indian-loving batsmen. At full force Australia's batting line-up is rival to that of India's at full force, the only problem is that India's batsmen are mostly in form whereas Australia's aren't. But even if Australia are at full batting form, on Indian pitches there is no Hayden-esque type batsman to flat track bully themselves to a high total. The best in India would have to be Clarke IIRC, but that's only with an average of around 40ish. Ponting has a better average, but as to whether he can exploit it or not is a different question.

I would definitely be playing spin in Hauritz in this series. Spin in India is too important, and even if they do leak runs because India vs spin is very much in India's favour, they often get the important wickets. For example Hauritz in 2004 picked up Tendulkar's wicket right when India didn't want to lose it, but got picked off for much the rest of the match. The seamers can be troublesome, but often they are blocked out as there is little swing and completely flat tracks.

With Johnson, Bollinger and Hilfenhaus Australia has enough firepower anyway. Johnson may be wayward lately, but he's the only one with a vicious bouncer out of the three, and that is India's weak point - short bowling. Bollinger and Hilfenhaus keep everything else in control and hopefully can pitch it up a bit fuller than they usually do and extract some edges.

India should have the upper hand but I have the feeling these are going to be slow draws
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

Australia won the toss and will bat first. Johnson, Hilfenhaus and Hauritz all playing as is Bollinger.

India's bowling attack has two seamers and two spinners, Harbhajan and Ohja are the spinners with Zaheer Khan and serial dud Ishant Sharma the two pace bowlers.'


India XI: Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Suresh Raina, *+MS Dhoni, Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, Zaheer Khan, Pragyan Ojha

Australia XI: Shane Watson, Simon Katich, *Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke, Michael Hussey, Marcus North, +Travis Paine, Nathan Hauritz, Mitchell Johnson, Ben Hilfenhaus, Doug Bollinger
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

Sehwag drops Watson at gully, second ball of the innings!! They get the single to open the scoring.
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

Katich trapped plumb in front by Zaheer Khan for 6.

1/13 in the fifth over. Ponting is the new batsman.
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

And that's lunch, Australia 101/1.

Australia wins the session, although giving up a few chances. India to put it quite frankly, haven't played well. Sharma can't bowl a fair ball, Harbhajan is just bowling 85 km/h straight balls, and Dhoni is either not bowling or not setting the right fields to the bowlers that are working - Khan and Ojha.

Watson has given up a couple of chances now, but he hasn't looked bad. He is mostly playing with confidence and doing well for his 44* so far. Ponting has looked even better, the best I've seen him play for quite a while. He did get caught behind off a no ball, edging around his pads down leg, but to be fair it was a terrible ball and that was a bit of bad luck that he didn't get a tickle more and send it for four. He's on 40*.

They've got to score 400 here to be in a challenging position, and preferably sticking at the rate they are at now. If they are still batting by the end of tomorrow they are going to run out of time to play for a win, and they need wins in what is only a two match series. Can't play out draws in a series like this.
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

1/101 at lunch. It was quite a bizarre first session. Watson was dropped off the second ball of the game, Katich was out early, Ishant Sharma bowled a lot of no-balls and had Ponting caught down the leg-side off one of them, Watson was then dropped again and now Australia are in a pretty good position.

India's fielding has been dreadful though. Two dropped catches, both of which weren't all that hard and there have been numerous singles taken which shouldn't be there at all. Add to that Dhoni seems intent on having his field quite deep so it's no wonder Australia are 1/101. India's also fallen two overs behind the over rate as well even though we've had 16 overs of spin out of the 28 that have been bowled.

Anyway, Watson on 44, Ponting on 40. Both have looked pretty good actually. India will need to regroup after lunch and make some inroads.
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

Ponting gone for 71. First bit of good fielding from the Indians, Raina with a direct hit from midwicket when Watson went for a quick single and Ponting probably wasn't running as fast as he should have been after misreading the fielding, probably was blocked for view by the silly mid wicket. Only a couple of centimetres in it, but that's all you need.

Khan gave Ponting a bit of a word as he was walking off, Ponting replying by walking into the middle of the Indian huddle to tell his side of the story. It's what we expect with India and Australia playing I suppose...

Unfortunate end, I was looking forward to seeing a Ponting century. Clarke's out there now, and with all this spin going on, can't be a bad thing. Looks a good pitch, and Watson's still trundling along nicely. India are down a bowler now too, Sharma has some sort of leg strain.
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

The cricket between these 2 countries is always good to watch. There's obvious niggle between the 2 and despite the flat tracks, it's always good to watch. The admiration seems grudging at best.
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

The Indian's have found some swing with the very old ball and some spinning misers.

Clarke was out earlier play a cut where there shouldn't have been one, and Hussey has just gotten out for a very, very careful 17 off 76 balls. Watson has gone from having a strike rate of 68 to now 38, he's just scored a brilliant hunderd off 259 balls, been out there a long time working very hard.

Another way to highlight how hard it has become to score is that the run rate was 4.8 at lunch and the next half hour after it. Then Dhoni has gone about restricting singles, exactly what he needed to do, and suddenly the Aussie batsmen were at a loss, but they rose to the challenge. Then the bowling got better as the ball got older, Hussey worked very hard to survive, but eventually had to bow to pressure. I give this one to Hussey though, he was really having a tough time out there, both he and Watson were in a state of complete concentration for about an hour, I don't think I saw them talk to each other at all, just walked to the middle of the pitch between overs and stared at the ground.

As I type this, North highlights just how tough it's been out there. Zaheer Kahn as just suddenly started to bowl very well, and almost comically knocked the off bail off his stumps as it just brushed it, and North is out for a duck from six balls.

It's only Paine's third Test, but he's going to have to play like it's his 75th, it's swinging like a boomerang, I can visually see it with ease. Not long left in the day, he and Watson just have to last this out. This innings changed in a heart-beat.
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

Watson shutting up shop after Ponting got out cost the side dearly. Placed enormous pressure on Clarke then Hussey and North. Scored far to slowly and didn't attempt to take on the spinners at all or even use his feet. While it is a hundred, it's not a game changing ton at this stage.
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

OhMyGodTheChips;409617 said:
Watson shutting up shop after Ponting got out cost the side dearly. Placed enormous pressure on Clarke then Hussey and North. Scored far to slowly and didn't attempt to take on the spinners at all or even use his feet. While it is a hundred, it's not a game changing ton at this stage.

At least he's still there though. Clarke, Hussey and North have offered us nothing when we really needed to keep the pressure up.

Very disappointing from the middle order again after such a bright start.
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

OhMyGodTheChips;409617 said:
Watson shutting up shop after Ponting got out cost the side dearly. Placed enormous pressure on Clarke then Hussey and North. Scored far to slowly and didn't attempt to take on the spinners at all or even use his feet. While it is a hundred, it's not a game changing ton at this stage.

Both he and Huss put the Aussies on the back foot in the last sessions. Playing for a draw on the first day makes me squeamish. It's like watching England.

But you can't really blame Watson for not using his feet against spin. I'm not sure I've ever seen him do that well.
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

Who has been watching it?

Watson really clamped down hard, he was relying on his good form to bring him through. Every ball seemed to trouble him a bit, but he kept the all out comfortably by stonewalling. I think it was a very good thing he did that, because Clarke started having trouble too once Dhoni did the right thing and started setting very good fields (can't say the same about his lacklustre keeping), and only lasted a couple of balls while trying to play shots, Hussey bunkered down as well and did well to last as long as he did, it finally took a half stroke from him to get out. So Watson bunkering down was practically all he could do, today he will have to take on the challenge of scoring a bit more and get Australia to a half decent total.

The pitch doesn't seem as friendly as it appears, so for Austraia's sake, maybe with the better bowling attack of the two they could make something of it.

For India's sake they should hope Sharma is out for the rest of the Test, they've shown they don't really need him. I hate the guy, but Sreesanth should get a run next Test, Sharma is getting a bit beyond a joke now.

Paine's got to play his best ever innings here to bring Australia to an unreachable total.
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

Boris;409634 said:
For India's sake they should hope Sharma is out for the rest of the Test, they've shown they don't really need him. I hate the guy, but Sreesanth should get a run next Test, Sharma is getting a bit beyond a joke now.

Finally, someone who agrees with me. Sharma is a complete spud, it's funny to think people had him in their best test XI in threads on this site at this end of last year and the start of this one.

He's a rubbish player and has been for quite some time. After yesterday's bowling effort, his bowling average is now over 38 runs per wicket.
 
Re: Australia tour of India 2010

Ljp86;409635 said:
Finally, someone who agrees with me. Sharma is a complete spud, it's funny to think people had him in their best test XI in threads on this site at this end of last year and the start of this one.

He's a rubbish player and has been for quite some time. After yesterday's bowling effort, his bowling average is now over 38 runs per wicket.

I think if he was part of any other Test playing country in the world he would be a world class bowler, but due to India's mismanagement and also just the natural fact that bowling pace in India sure takes it out of you. When I first saw him in Australia a couple of years ago I thought he would be a very good bowler, and followed his journey but I'm now completely convinced it's pointless having him play on. He has been completely destroyed by almost every batsman in the last few Indian tours plus 2 of those 38 runs per wicket are no balls.
 
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