AUS vs IND: Mitchell Starc set to return to squad just 2 days before 1st Test

NZ vs PAK: Lockie Ferguson’s absence will have no impact, says Haider Ali

Teh 20-year-old Pakistan batsman Haider Ali has started focussing on his batting and now wants to play longer innings, staying at the crease to finish games. Speaking to the media before the first T20 match between New Zealand and Pakistan in Eden Park, Auckland on 18th December, Ali also said that Kiwi speedster Lockie Ferguson. “I don’t think it is a big difference to us because we are preparing to face all their bowlers and we don’t believe in focussing on any one particular bowler,” said Haider. “We give importance to all opposition bowlers be it Ferguson or anyone else. Sometimes it happens that the part-time bowlers take wickets instead of the main bowlers. It’s not our mentality to focus on just one bowler,” the batsman who made his international debut against England in a T20I this year added. Ferguson, 29, was the Man of the Series from New Zealand’ 2-0 win over Windies in the recently concluded T20I series has 21 wickets in 11 T20Is at an unbelievable average of 13.2 Talking about his game plan, teh Attock born youngster said, “I am working on staying at the wicket for a longer period of time and not trying to hit the ball every delivery. I want to play longer and pace my innings accordingly

Allan Border praises Indian pacers, calls Bumrah the real deal

Former Australia captain Allan Border has praised the Indian pace bowling unit calling it an improvement of leaps and bounds from the days when India used to play three-four spinners even on pace friendly wickets. “India really needed to develop some fast bowlers, didn’t they? Every time they toured anywhere, they were presented with grassy pitches, pace-friendly pitches. So the days of playing three or four spinners are long gone,” Border told Australia’s Cricket Network. The World Cup-winning skipper was in awe of Indian pace sensation Bumrah. “It’s incredible, his rise through the ranks just out of probably IPL. It started there and he has just taken the world of cricket by storm,” he said. The 65-year-old then went on to say that Bumrah has actually out guessed everyone with his fitness. “He has an unusual action, everyone thought he is going to struggle with injuries and things like that. He has had a little bit of a niggle of late,” Calling Bumrah a purely ‘Indian Thing’ while describing his unusual action, Border, who played 156 Tests for Australia and scored more than 11,000 runs in it, said, “He is the real deal, isn’t he? He just has the awkward action but he bowls at a good pace, so not the classical way of doing things. It is very much an Indian thing really, they just let the kids develop their own styles.” The first Test between Australia and India begins on 17th December in Adelaide and if the Warmp-Up match is anything to go by, the Pink ball can cause real damage to the Aussies as all the four Indian pacers in Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Navdeep Saini and Mohammed Siraj have wrecked havoc with it. Bumrah is also the fastest Indian speedster to take 50 Test wickets. He achieved the feat in just 11 Tests.

AUS vs IND: Tim Paine will play the main sledger, reckons Mohammad Kaif

Tim Panie the Aussie captain has the best chance to redeem himself from the last Border-Gavaskar Trophy defeat, the first-ever for Australia at home in the history of their Test cricket. And Mohammad Kaif, former India cricketer believes that Paine,36, will go to any extent to do that and it includes sledging as well. The reason why Kaif, who played 138 international games for India, thinks this way is because Paine has nothing to do with the IPL and hence he need not worry about his connections with the Indian team or its members. "All the players who play in the IPL, whether it is (Aaron) Finch, (David) Warner, or (Pat) Cummins, none of them are going to fight now. Tim Paine does not play, he knows that he is not going to come to India, he does not have anything to do with the IPL, so he can confront the Indians," said the man who scored 3177 international runs for India. Kaif,40, also feels that it is the last chance for Paine to prove himself with the bat as well, otherwise, he might just be playing his last international series. "He is not able to score runs with the bat. He just got the captaincy because Smith and Warner had the problem at the time. They were banned, so he was made the captain in compulsion. Now that they have come back, if he doesn't score, then his place in the XI will also be difficult. So it will be better if he concentrates on batting and keeping only this time," Kaif said. In the 19 Tests as captain Paine has won 10 and lost six and hence not really in a bad position, however, it is his batting that has been a real issue. Since his comeback to the Aussie team, Pine has scored just 1043 runs in 42 innings of 27 matches at an average of just 30, which by modern Australian standards is below par. The first Test, a day/night affair between hosts and India begins on 17th December in Adelaide.

AUS A vs IND: Ton-up Vihari, Pant push India towards victory in Sydney

The Indian team under the leadership of Ajinkya Rahane has attained a firm control over the second tour match against the Australia A team after complete team performances with the bat on the second day. The visitors started their second innings on the third and final day of the match and it provided the pair of Shubman Gill and Prithvi Shaw- to have a perfect outing to stake a claim on the opener slot created by Rohit Sharma’s absence. But, Prithvi Shaw failed to seize the opportunity and was dismissed early. The next man in, Shubman Gill was up to the task and he made most of the opportunity to push on for a place at the top of the order. Gill batted with supreme confidence and found immaculate timing and his placement was delicate in an innings of 65 from 78 balls where he hit 10 crisp boundaries. On the other hand, Mayank Agarwal, who is one of the certain starters for the Adelaide Test, was patient to wait for loose deliveries before he could go for big runs. He showed patience to see out more than 120 balls for his 61 runs that included only four boundaries and two sixes. He was admirably cautious against going after the pacers but the leg-spin of Swepson was too inaccurate to trouble him and he enjoyed it to the fullest and made a good display of his technique against spin bowling. The batting of Hanuma Vihari, who has made a name for himself in the Indian Test team on the back of his attritional batting and bowling the team out of trouble, was a point of contention for the visitors after he had failed to make any big runs in the three innings preceding the one on the last day of the second tour game. Vihari started positively against the full tosses off Swepson but quickly settled into his rhythm and showed resistance against tight bowling from the Australia A bowlers. Like Agarwal, he too was severe against Swepson’s loose deliveries but against pacers, he was willing to wait for the deliveries to pitch in his arc, and whenever bowlers erred by bowling too full to him, he obliged to drive them for boundaries through his innings. Another concern for the visitors was the batting of Rishabh Pant and there is a toss-up between him and Wriddhiman Saha on who will don the gloves for the visitors in Adelaide. Pant was given the perfect opportunity to launch his attack, in a role the Indian team would love him to play whenever they will be in an ascending position going ahead in the main series. Pant looked at his usual best and in the last over of the day, he needed 22 runs to complete his century, which he did in a signatory emphatic style, hitting Jack Wildermuth to all parts of the ground. Earlier, on day one, It was India’s bowlers day to make early inroad before the series starting Adelaide. Joe Burns poor form continued while the left-handed Marcus Harris, who has been added to the Test squad to face the touring Indians in Adelaide, too failed to make any impressive outing against the menacing duo of Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami. Both of them bowled like a champion pair and restricted the hosts without any hittable balls barring a few later in their spells. Shami made good use of the round-the wicket angle and troubled the left-handers in the lineup. Other pairs of pacers in Navdeep Saini and Mohammad Siraj looked sharp and mopped up the tail after the rout of middle-order by Shami and Bumrah. Before that, the Australia A bowlers had posed massive challenges to the Indian batting line up as the tourists could have resurrected only on the back of a stupendous last-wicket partnership between Siraj and Jasprit Bumrah, who scored his maiden first-class fifty. The visitors had a lot of boxes to tick before the game began and ended up ticking all the boxes at the end of the play on day two. The conundrum on Gill and Shaw will be more or less settled with Gill scoring runs and showing signs of being in great form and same is the case of Pant and Saha debate where Pant has against established what he can bring to the table for the visitors but the final call on selection is presumably yet to be made. Gill’s runs would keep him reckoning especially from the second Test when Kohli will return home in his paternity leave. Good news has emerged for the Indian team with Rohit Sharma regaining full fitness and preparing to take the flight to Australia on December 13 but he is unlikely to join the squad before the conclusion of the second Test on December 30 in Melbourne.