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Haha. Are you sure about the latter? Its well known to the world that Karthik is a better keeper than Dhoni.

Technique is not everything apparently. Cleared proved by the whole lot namely Adam Gilchrist, Sanath Jayasuriya, Virender Sehwag, Shahid Afridi and plenty more I can't recollect at the moment. What matters is hand eye co-ordination these days it seems.

More than anything else what we need is good sportive pitches back home. Unless there is a change here I don't think we should expect much overseas. Though our past performances overseas have been better than that put together in the last 50 years there is a lot of scope for improvement. But what India have achieved since Ganguly & John Wrights reign began is quite commendable.

Nopes. I think Dhoni has improved by leaps and bounds and is as good, if not better than Karthik. Recent example was the last test against Pak. Karthik kept horribly. Dhoni was better in the first two matches.

BTW: Any idea where I can get the videos from ?

One must also realize that keeping like batting or bowling comes good with practice. And I am sure Karthik had none of that well in god knows how long. For we all could see him fielding at covers or backward point. Technically speaking Karthik is considered (not by me, but the cricket fraternity of experts) the better keeper and keeping to him comes naturally unlike Dhoni. But yes I do agree that Dhoni is improving a lot.

And just to mention the other big news. WI beating SA in SA and that too pretty convincingly. Would love to see the WI becoming a good team again. But I think it was a flash in the pan AND due to an overconfident approach by SA.

WI last won an overseas test against a higher ranked nation in 2000.

Interesting read this
Cricinfo - Say what?

It has probably offset some of the gloom set in after India's debacle at MCG.

World cricket desperately need a WI revival

WI won the test due to their tremendous bowling. SA tried hard but couldn't handle the bounce & pace generated by WI bowlers. In contrast, SA had only Steyn for pace but he was no where as menacing as WI bowlers.

Now, coming back to the topic, any predictions for final 11. After hearing in today's newspaper, I feel YS might get dropped for VS. What say guyz?

India should open with Dravid, Sehwag: Waugh

@ Diabloo: Nooooo...not again.

And Jaffer is the man who scored heavily in the series against Pakistan in India. Now he doesn't even look like a Test batsman in Australia, as per Waugh. The irony is that the pitch at the MCG was actually described as a batting pitch by the commentators. In Perth (is there a match there in this series?) the pitch will be lightning fast and bouncy and we can expect our batsmen to struggle again. Actually the Sydney pitch can be expected to favour spinners in the final two days and could be our last chance to climb back into this series.

I agree with Waugh that Sehwag should be brought in to the team in place of Jaffer. I am not very happy about going back to Sehwag, but we have no other options and have nothing to lose. Sehwag, like Ganguly is technically very suspect. In his youth his technical shortcomings were overcome with a quick eye. As a batsman ages, that quickness of eye deserts him and he has to rely on sound technique for survival. Tendulkar has it, but not Sehwag. I think Sehwag always needed luck to survive on Australian pitches and this time he will need a lot more.

Yuvraj needs to be backed by the team management. He has the talent, even if he is a bit suspect early in his innings. If given a sustained opportunity I am sure he will succeed.

When I saw the score it was 134/6. I thought Sehwag's comeback has inspired Indian bowling :Cheering:. But sadly, still no Sehwag :Frustrati

Oops we did it again - allowed Symmo and Hogg (of all people) to run away to a 100 partnership (20 overs that too)

What we are seeing is 'Australianism' in full flow.

Excerpts from an article titled "Australianism' by John Arlott in 1948 :

We are faced with Australian batting, bowling, fielding, captaincy and ‘Australianism’. Australianism means a single-minded determination to win – to win within the laws but, if necessary, to the last limit within them. It means where the ‘impossible’ is within the realm of what a human body can do, there are Australians who believe that they can do it – and who have succeeded often enough to make us wonder if anything is impossible to them. It means they have never lost a match – particularly a test match – until the last run is scored or their last wicket has fallen.

It is almost in every match we get beaten up like this with 134/6 to 336/7 currently. Don't knwo why our people do not want to keep up the pressure when it matters most...