The Official Bharat Army Thread

[Doink]

Balaji is injured and is recovering from injury and has just started bowling in the nets. I'll be happy even if he soon is able to play for Tamil Nadu. He's a good bowler and just needs to be back in the domestic circuit and I'm sure he wont take much time in knocking the doors of the Indian team. One bowler who has recovered from injury and deserves another break is Avishkar Salvi. He had originally been selected to tour Australia in 2004 but could not make it due to injury. Balaji came in his place and we all know what happened after that! Salvi is doing well for Mumbai. I hear there's an A-team tour to Australia. Hope Salvi is selected for that.

[ind_supporter]

India are in abit of a surprice with the new Monty this guy is good. never seen him bowl bit looking predicting from scorcard iv seen i think india would like work on Slow left-arm orthodox batting but don't know what the matches will hold.

[DomainK]

Its now time to concentrate on England. They are a good side and I am sure we have some quality cricket coming up.

[Colourful Chaddi]

Our ODI form has been excellent and we will diffinatly win the 7 match ODI series. I am more worried about the Test Mathes.

The bowler who will give England the most trouble will be Simon Jones. If he gets the new ball he will trouble our batsmen alot with his ability to coventional swing a ball, I can see him dismissing Sehwag many times, as Sehwag is not a great player when the ball is moving, especially when the ball is coming into him.

We would be using the SG ball in the Test matches and because it starts to reverse after about 10 overs, Simon Jones again will be very dangerous, we will need Dravid to be in top form as he is the only batsemn that looks good enough to challenge his bowling.

[DomainK]

This series is going to test a few players. Both teams will have very good strategy and will impliment the strategies well. India will have the home advantage and spin is going to be the main difference here. Apart from that England is a very good team and will give a hard time to both Indian barsmen and bowlers.

Unfortunately the in-form batsman Yuvraj is injured. I will look forward to some good show from sachin and Dravid. Sehwag, like you said will be tested but I doubt how much help Jones will get from the pitches here. But the Indian spinners will play the most important role. I can already visualise fielders surrounding the batman in catching positions and Indian spinners creating all sorts of trouble for the English batsmen. We will see some of those bat-pad catches, wrong ones and top spinners.

Having said all that, I am ready to see surprises. This England team is quite capable of giving some big surprises and I am sure they have learnt their lessons from the lose in Pakistan. But whatever is the result, we have some exciting cricket coming.

[Colourful Chaddi]

It is diffinatly a big blow that Yuvraj is injured, he is a very good player of pace bowling and seeing that England were playing there fast men, Yuvraj would have had alot of success facing them on our lifeless picthes.

I think Simon Jones will still be effective without the green tops he has in England, he is a swing bowler so he would rely on his wickets with the aid of air not the picth. Flintoff would not be very effective, i can't see him tking many wickets on this tour, he is more likely to play as a stock bowler keeping the runs down.

Panesar would be most likely to be picked in the team but I don't see him troubling our batsemn, his figures againts CC of India were hardly flattering.

Like you have said spin bowling will be the key for us. It is our biggest strentgh and their biggest weakness. Apart from Bell and Collywood if he is picked the rest look like they will struggle big time against Kumble and Harbhajan. KP is a good player of spin but he is far to in-consistant to trouble us, he will get out playing a rash shot.

He will also be our best friend as he will drop the catches early on off Sehwag!

[ind_supporter]

i am dissapointed with india preforance agaist England today i think Segwag could have played better then just 2 runs. i can't believe india are trailing by 71 runs, even through Englands 3 good players are off the pitch. England are playing better then i expected well done to England. M Hoggard took 5 wickets that is some impressive work by him and 19 maidens by Monty, England not playing bad at all very impressed with their team work.

[Mr Hutt]

end of day 4... england lead by 367 runs.. contributions by alaistere cook's ton and some blaze lent by kevin peterson with andrew straus in his ever dependable form, but for the love of god!!!! what was the indian team doing in the field???? i think they played themselves out of the match today due to some appalling fielding, true kevin peterson was definately out and that decision went against them and was a hard one to swallow but they had cook out atleast 3 times!!! and normally india's fielding is not this bad... i wonder what is going on in rahul dravids head at the moment... tommorow india better have their act togather and try to play out the day without any heroics because without yuvraj, they are not looking very solid in batting either. Lets hope they put up a fight!!! normally with their lineup i would back them to get these runs!!! but right now if they can save this match i think it will be a minor miracle!!

[Colourful Chaddi]

Where have you all Indian fans ran away? DomainK, Doink, ind_supporter, where are you guys?? We need to discuss cricket man.

Yes guys I can understand how it feels to lose the 3rd match and draw the series which we should have won 3-0, but these things happen in cricket. The ODI series is coming up and we need to discuss some issues and get some revenge back on the England team.

With Tendulkar injured its going to be a big metal boost for England, even if Tendulkar doesn;t perfrom as great as he used to India always plays well when he is in the team, remember we only won series like 6-1 to Sri-Lankan and 4-1 to Pakistan when Tendulkar played.

England are rubbish at ODi cricket anyway and away from home they play the pajama games much like the minnows so we should win this series easily, if we can win against Pakistan and Sri Lanka at that margin we should win against England with no toruble.

This would be my XI for the matches:

1) Virender Sehwag
2) Gautham Ghambir
3) Yuvraj Singh
4) Rahul Dravid
5) Suresh Raina
6) Mehendra Singh Dhoni
7) Irfan Pathan
8) Sreesanth
9) Rudra Pratap Singh
10) Munaf Patel
11) ??

[marioratnakar]

Nice to see Bhajji take some wickets. And very nice to see him being top scorer as well as top wicket taker. Looks like he is confident again like he was after the Australia series. All said and done, England ripped through our famed top order as if they were nothing.This is something which we should take seriously.