Seems India is losing its way in third test match. To sum up the pros and cons of this match...

PROS:
Sehwag's Batting. He proved that he too can stay for sometime on the crease.

Aakash Chopra's 48. He is improving with every match but still he needs to be positive and this does not mean aggressive.

Kumble's 6 wickets. He has done decently well in this series proving his critics wrong.

Agarkar's 3 wickets and decent line and length. This chap too is improving with every match. It would have been better for him to get some support from other end. Zaheer was not even half fit and Nehra, well I think we need to find some alternative for this chap who cannot field, bat and as of now looks average bowler.

CONS:
Sehwag's batting. Yes, he can be better off parting away with some of his aggression. The match would have been in India's favour now if he had controlled his aggression for atleast couple of hours.

Sachin's form. hmmmmmmmm, I believe everyone goes thru something like this. When he will start scoring people will forget his bad patch and when he is thru bad patch people will forget almost 60+ international centuries (ODIs and Tests). Anyways, I am not the right person to comment on him as I am his fanatic fan. I believe in him a lot. 5 or 6 bad test matches cannot make me change my belief and trust in him. Every batsman goes thru this sometime or the other. Lara was century-less for almost 3 years, Ponting was horrible in 2001 (and see him now.). Even Bradman had a terrible form by his standards (he averaged only 50 or so :-) ) during one Ashes. So I suppose we shd leave him alone. He needs some time to re-think. He was looking good today. Didn't saw how he got out though. Heard Williams showed him some finger to pavilion. That will be interesting.

Ganguly's discomfort against Short bowling. Though our captain has shown great spirit and guts scoring a century at Brisbane he still has a lot of room for improvement specially against short bowling. He played well though, it seems in second innings. He is growing well as a captain and that is good sign for future.

All in all it looks like it will be 1-1 tomm except if we manage to get Aussies under 90-100 (or whatever target we set) and this looks a little improbable.

To sum it up, whatever be the outcome, I have a lots of hope from this team for Sydney test match.

Cheers,
Vivek.

India lost but took the match to the fifth day. Australia in recent years has been used to winning here in three days.

Looking forward to the series decider here in Sydney, starting this Friday.

Kumble at his best!!!!!!!!!!!!

Way to go guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

N

Many Positives from Sydney:
The Return Of the King :-)) (who else!!!!! Sachin Tendulkar.......)
Laxman's continued good run against Aus
Dravid's batting in 2nd inngs
Kumble excellent spell in 1st inngs...(thought he could have done better in 2nd inngs)
Tiring out Aus mentally and physically

Negatives:
Patel's keeping
Kartik's bowling
Bucknor's poor umpiring and not so good attitude towards Indian (Patel episode)

Cheers,
V i V e K...

It was a fantastic test match dominated by India's batsmen, and what a great comeback by Sachin. Great performance by Kumble as well and if one of the other bowlers had fired, India would have won this test and the series.

On New Years eve at about 8 pm, I went to our local supermarket about 1km from where I stay, and who else should be there but Sachin Tendulkar, Ajit Agarkar and Ashish Nehra, standing at a counter all by themselves. My daughter got their autographs, and I congratulated Agarkar on his performance to date, and wished him and Sachin all the best for the Sydney Test. Nehra kept looking the other way and I was happy to ignore him as well.

I wonder what they were doing at that time of the evening in my part of Sydney ?

Cool man. It is my greatest desire to meet Sachin once. Even though I am a Bombayite I have never got a chance to meet him.

Anyways, indeed a great test match. And though India lost the first ODI, Agarkar continued his form in ODIs. He needs 12 more wkts to complete 200 wkts in ODIs!!!!

Cheers,
V i V e K ...