India's tour of Australia

This boxing day test is going to be extra special because it is the 100'th test match to be played in MCG and it befits the occasion that Australia, the top dog at the moment takes on India, clearly the second best team in the world at the moment when it comes to tests, and it does help that they are coming back on an impressive performance in the wins against England and Pakistan.

As has been the case in the recent times India needs to take some tricky decisions regarding the composition of the playing eleven and invariably each have their own merits, and is a good sign to know that there is competition for places in the side which would keep the players on their toes and motivate them to perform better.

I still don't get it why all this talk of "yuvraj" has to play thing being played out, when clearly he has a long way to go before he can be talked on par with the likes of ganguly's and laxman's; Dravid & Sachin are altogether on different plane. Well that being said if the team management really wants to have Yuvraj in the mix of things then so be it but that should not be at the expense of an experienced campaigner like Dravid, who for all that has been said about him in the recent past is the best batsmen India have had away from home for the last 7-8 years and sending him out to open is sacrilege. I know the difference between the coming of one down and an opener can just be a single ball but that doesn't cut ice because people are comfortable in their own positions and when you ask them to come in at a different position, they are being asked to perform out of their comfort zone which might effect their over all game, classic examples of this going wrong are Laxman, who bats for Hyderabad mostly at one down, in the first half of his career and Yuvraj himself. So if they decide to go with Yuvraj then i would like to have him open and see what he is made off and if that fails, he will still make the test team one day, simply because he is a class act and sooner or later will make the same kind of impact that he's had in the other two shortened versions of the game. Dinesh Karthik deserves better but that's how Indian cricket is, am afraid he is on his way to becoming the next Aakash Chopra.

When it comes to Bowling kumble selects himself and as do Zaheer and RP provided they are fit. The last place is going to be tricky, going with three left armers is asking for troubles and Pathan still has to get back the swing he had when he came onto the scene to really warrant a place in the test team. So that leaves either Pankaj or Ishant but it's not worth giving Pankaj his first game without even seeing what he can do so Ishant coming back of a five-fer should get the fourth spot unless kumble wants to go with two spinners especially with the pitch being damp, it could help a finger spinner like bajji to get some purchase out of it.

All that said, here is for hoping a keenly contested series and may the better team win.