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The Test series between Australia and India will finally kick-start on Tuesday with the first Test and you can follow the live blog of game from the Adelaide Oval starting 10.30 am local time.
The sad passing away of Phil Hughes overshadowed the start of this first Test that was earlier supposed to start off five days ago.
>>FOLLOW THE LIVE BLOG OF DAY FIVE
What it has also done from a cricketing perspective is to blunt any kind of pre-series nastiness that can be expected when two cricketing rivals of this magnitude go head-to-head.
The pre-match press conferences have been inevitably docile and what must now be seen is if the performances on the field get affected by the tragic events in the lead-up to this game.
The extra five days have also allowed Australian captain Michael Clarke to recover from his hamstring injury and he will now lead the side in this first Test match. As a result, Shaun Marsh misses out of the XI, while Josh Hazlewood will need to wait awhile before making his Test debut after the selectors named Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle to partner Mitchell Johnson with the new ball.
The rest of the side is on expected lines after the selectors had earlier named a 13-man squad. Shane Watson will be replacing Alex Doolan at the number three spot.
Australia have fallen behind in the race to the number one ranking in Tests; so much so that even a 4-0 whitewash will not help them recapture that top spot from South Africa.
A 2-0 defeat at the hands of Pakistan was painful to take but it came in conditions as different from those back home as pavlova is from kheer, and it shouldn’t be much of a concern for them in this series.
Indian captain MS Dhoni was also expected to miss the first Test when it was to begin on December 4 and as things stand, despite being a regular presence in the Indian nets in the lead-up to this match, he has been ruled out of this Test match.
Stand-in skipper Virat Kohli gets his first chance to lead the Indian Test side and it couldn’t have come under tougher conditions – playing Australia in Australia isn’t the easiest of propositions for a team from the sub-continent and having come off a 3-1 drubbing at the hands of England makes the job even tougher for India.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar will also miss out this game – and there’s every chance he could be ruled out of the second Test too – because of an ankle injury, which puts the onus on Ishant Sharma, Varun Aaron, Umesh Yadav and Mohammad Shami to take up the bowling attack.
The Adelaide track is known to be bit of a batting paradise and India could opt to play just three speedsters and one frontline spinner in R Ashwin.
The selectors, therefore, will need to decide which three out of the four quick bowlers will make the playing XI and what will be the balance of the side – do they bring in an extra bowler/bowling all-rounder at number six or play a frontline batsman.
Ravindra Jadeja has a decent overall bowling record in Test cricket but he picked up just nine wickets in England at 47, not the kind of figures a captain would like from his second spinner. The other option that Kohli has is to bring in Karn Sharma who picked up a total of six wickets over the two warm-up games India played.
Karn isn’t much of a batsman and it could seriously weaken the Indian batting line-up. An extra batsman is worth looking at but a lot will depend on what captain Kohli’s mindset currently is.
The last time these two sides played at the Adelaide Oval was in 2012, and Australia had piled on the agony with a score of 604 batting first. Kohli did manage a century but India were bowled out for 272 and set to chase down 501 in the final innings, the visitors managed just 201 in their second dig.
The visitors will be hoping to prevent a repeat of that rout.
Join me for the first day of this first Test between Australia and India on Tuesday here and you can follow the live score of this game from 11:00am (AEDT) and post your comments in the section below.
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