India vs Australia

Sun Oct 25
14:30 local | 09:00 GMT
1st ODI - India v Australia
Reliance Stadium, Vadodara

Wed Oct 28
14:30 local | 09:00 GMT
2nd ODI - India v Australia
Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium, Jamtha, Nagpur

Sat Oct 31
14:30 local | 09:00 GMT
3rd ODI - India v Australia
Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi

Mon Nov 2
14:30 local | 09:00 GMT
4th ODI - India v Australia
Punjab Cricket Association Stadium, Mohali, Chandigarh

Thu Nov 5
14:30 local | 09:00 GMT
5th ODI - India v Australia
Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Uppal, Hyderabad

Sun Nov 8
09:00 local | 03:30 GMT
6th ODI - India v Australia
Nehru Stadium, Guwahati

Wed Nov 11
14:30 local | 09:00 GMT
7th ODI - India v Australia
Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai

Australian squad : Ricky Ponting (captain), Michael Hussey (vice captain), Doug Bollinger, Nathan Hauritz, Jon Holland, Ben Hilfenhaus, James Hopes, Mitchell Johnson, Brett Lee, Shaun Marsh, Tim Paine, Peter Siddle, Adam Voges, Shane Watson, Cameron White

The Indian team will be selected today and the selectors are in a dilemna whether to select or to drop Rahul Dravid.

Nice to see Shaun Marsh back in action. India's weak link will be their bowling once again while the return of Sehwag and Yuvraj will bolster their batting. Yusuf Pathan is all set to be excluded.

Australia would be the first ones zuhair. 2 back to back 7 ODI match series'. Surely they've had enough of ODI cricket in the last month and a half. But the recent success will spur them on to hit the Indians hard. I expect it to be a good contest. Looking forward to Lee vs Tendulkar and Sehwag!

There won't be full houses I reckon. Test crowds are dead in India and ODI crowds will be soon enough. In Australia we attract the most fans to the tests and ODIs, they are extremely popular and the spectators have a high understand of the game. Indians are trivialising the game with all these 2020s. Australia has played a 5 ODI series v NZ, 5 ODI series v SA, 5 ODI series v SA (away), 5 ODI series v Pak (Neutral), 7 ODI series v England (away), a full quota of matches in the CT and now they'll play 7 ODIs v India (away). This is absolutely ridiculous.

What a farce. Why the hell was Dravid picked for SRL tour and SAF in the first place if he was not the part of their long term plan? DO they want to keep him for difficult conditions when the so called young brigade can't handle the tough conditions? They should never have brought him back in the first place - dropping him is really bad.

Yousuf and RP have been rightly dropped though. they have not done anything of significance in the last year or so. You can't continue to play on your IPL performance. I don't understand why have they axed Nayar? How many chances was the young guy given? And also - the Indian selectors have erred in retaining Ishant. He should have been given a break - they need him for the longer version - playing seven games on dead tracks will only ruin his already ailing body and bowling both.

The selectors deserve a slap on their faces.  Is this how you treat a player who has time and again bailed the team out of trouble? You just bring him back from the wilderness and then throw him out. I hope they had a talk with him before the meeting because this will otherwise dent his confidence very badly. If performance is the key then Dhoni should have been the first one out.

Dravid's averaged 36 since he's come back and had he not scored those 76 runs and held one end against Pakistan, India might as well would have ended up with less than a 100. This is really a shambolic act by the selectors.

Robin Singh and Venkat Prasad have been dropped as fielding and bowling coaches respectively. Not that surprising, Prasad was never that good a bowler anyway and it doesn't look like he was fixing any of the problems with Sharma and RP (albeit you don't need to be a world class bowler to be a good coach, Troy Cooley did wonders for England's bowlers and Terry Jenner wasn't that great a leggie in his time, but has done a good job with some young spinners including Warne in his youth).

Robin Singh as fielding coach.. how? He's no Harper or Jonty that's for sure.

Will they call back Dravid again when they tour SAF?

Got to agree with the comments over the Indian selectors - where is the consistency ?  Dravid's exclusion shows their thinking is muddled at best , off the wall (no pun intended!) at worst. His return showed a complete lack of faith in the middle order by the selectors and India's performances of late have surely done nothing to change that perception. The pciking and premature discarding of Nayar just adds to the growing belief that the selectors in India are trying their very best to outshine their Pakistani counterparts.
         As for yet another 7 match series , I'll not comment for fear of having to ban myself for bad language !



Edited by Sledger - 16 October 2009 at 6:48am

That is a good sign then but HOPEFULLY he will not be flown to the seventh sky by the Indian media - just see what they have done to Irfan Pathan, RP and Ishant.

Edited by zuhair_abbasi - 16 October 2009 at 7:21am

Originally posted by spin wizard Say what you guys want but I'm looking forward to a 7 match ODI series between these two teams.  Sehwag is showing form, if Gambhir gets back some, it's gonna be a cracker!

Me too spin, I am really looking forward for 7 match series.#1 vs #2 thats exactly what I wanted for a long long time.

well obviously there is no clarity on the part of the selectors. Personally as I've said before, the youngsters, no matter how poorly they perform, should have been thrown in at the CT09. They got knocked out in the first round anyways, so it couldn't have been worse right?

Now the selectors and everybody are looking like jokers because of the lack of trust they have shown in the younger players, and such a senior player like Rahul is being treated in such an unfair manner. pathetic! This has always been the case with the BCCI and IND. I don't want to start this all over again but this is how they treat every person who gives his all for the country... they get thrown out as if they are useless... That is why I hate the BCCI.

I think this series is very important for India if they lose this than there might be alot of chances and Dhoni's captaincy might be under threat.It will be a great series i hope Holland does well.

Originally posted by mystery Dhoni's captaincy might be under threat.

Dhoni has done enough to get captaincy till next World cup mate.That will never happen anytime soon. 

Milks is right, selection is a problem worldwide, I don't think any gets more bizarre than what goes on on my side.