Cricket (Fan) atic: The English Tour 2007

A little introspection

1. Opening - Kartik seems to be a very determined player. A quality which is must for a opening batsmen especially in foreign conditions. He does have techinique to back his confidence and determination. On the contrary, Wasim Jaffer is a suspect in foreign conditions. He is more of sub-continent player .. that is where the ball does not move and bounce. I strongly feel he will be a suspect in English conditions too.

2. Middle Order - One of the fact that cannot be denied is that Indian middle order looks very strong on PAPER. The real test for middle order is when the openers fail early and I dont think there would be any arguements on the fact that off late our middle order has been vulnerable despite the presence of Sachin, Dravid, Sourav & Laxman. Of course we all will be looking forward to Sachin and Laxman who have done well in the past in foreign conditions. Rahul is best at no. 2. Now that Sachin is in some kind of form we can expect a decent performance from the middle order.

4. Pace Bowling - We will miss Ajit Agarkar. Agarkar has been a mystery for very long time but also been one of the player who has been lucky enough to receive consistent chances. He was very unfortunate to miss, he bowls well in conditions that favour swing bowling.

Zaheer bowls well and is performing consistently .. but is a suspect when the oppostions take the attack to him .. Rp Singh has decent speed .. but still lacks the potency .. Ishant Sharma is young .. he can be a surprise in English conditions .. dark horse.

5. Spin Bowling - No doubt Anil Kumble is the best .. time and again he has proved his worth and will be a good bowler to have. We are facing a young English Team. Though they have done reasonable well in the past they are inexperienced bunch compared to the amount of expereince India has got. I wish, hope and trust India use their expereince to keep the English Team under control. We have the potential .. only thing we need to believe ourselves.

ALL THE BEST INDIAN TEAM