CricDigs Blogs

What will India do between now and January 2nd to make a difference? Change of personnel? Change of approach? Change of Order?

Though it might be difficult to single out any one factor that was the difference between the two teams, the opening pair’s performance might be a good candidate for it. Compare Australia’s pair of Mathew Hayden and Jacques to India’s Dravid & Jafar. Had the Indian openers played a little more positively and given India some semblance of a start, things could have been a bit different.

This does not mean that everything else has worked out as planned for India. Hardly the case. With the exception of Sachin, Laxman and Saurav, all other batsman have totally failed as well. Yuvraj, coming off a tremendous batting display against the weakened Pakistani attack, have failed to make any impression with the bat. From some of the reports, looks like he has made an impression with his “attitude” problem and might be axed for the second test. One can not deny that Indian management had changed the batting order just to accomodate him in the line-up. I won’t be surprised if it goes back to Jafar/Sehwag combination at the top with Dravid coming in his usual #3 spot.

At the moment though, how India will fair at the SCG is anybody’s guess. Australians are at the top of their game already and barring an occasional spark in the bowling attack, the Indians don’t even looked warmed-up. That is not a good sign at all.

Will there be a lot of changes to the side? One possible line-up could be..

Sehwag, Jafar, Dravid, Sachin, Ganguly, Laxman, Dhoni, Pathan, Kumble, Zaheer, Harbhajan

Any thoughts?