News Analysis India

Tag: back-to-back

  • BCCI announces team India’s playing XI for the first test against Australia

    The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI)  on Wednesday announced the team India’s playing XI for the first Border-Gavaskar Test against Australia starting tomorrow in Adelaide.

    Mayank Agarwal, Prithvi Shaw, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, Hanuma Vihari, Wriddhiman Saha, Ravichandran Ashwin, Umesh Yadav, Mohammad Shami, and Jasprit Bumrah.

    The Virat Kohli-led side has chosen to go in with three seamers and one spinner in the first Test. Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Shami, and Umesh Yadav are the three pacers while Ravichandran Ashwin has been chosen as the lone spinner.

    With the four-match Test series against Australia set to get underway on Thursday, Virat Kohli-led India will be looking to close the gap with table-toppers Australia in the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) points table.

    India holds third place in the ICC Men’s Test team rankings with 114 rating points, whilst Australia top the rankings with 116.46 rating points. New Zealand follows closely in second with 116.37 rating points.

    New Zealand is very close to reaching the ICC World Test Championship final in 2021 after securing back-to-back innings wins against the West Indies.

  • India-Australia series will kick off the road to T20 World Cup

    The India-Australia series will kick off with the ODIs but it’s the T20 internationals that both the teams will be observing more keenly. International sports teams tend to prioritize World Cups, and the ICC will stage two back-to-back T20 World Cups, Covid-permitting, in India (October-November 2021) and Australia (2022).
    The T20 format is also evolving at speeds which sometimes tend to overwhelm even the keenest coaching expert and backroom data cruncher. This makes long-term planning for events like World Cups both fraught with danger and an absolute necessity. With only a sprinkling of T20 Internationals in each bilateral series, it is imperative that optimum use is made of each game.
    Australia opener David Warner even sounded peeved the other day that the ODIs would be played at all, saying, “Our white-ball teams are relevant to the World Cups. Given there’s a T20 World Cup coming up in India, the preference will be the T20 stuff first.”