Australia all-rounder Cameron White today echoed Ponting’s view that India would be a tough nut to crack at home.
“As Ponting said the Indians will be very hard to beat on their home soil and I too feel the same. I think it will be a good, hard and exciting cricket series between the two countries,” White, the captain of Victoria Bushrangers, told reporters ahead their Champions League semifinal match against domestic rivals New South Wales Blues here tomorrow.
“Even the Indians will get the support of thousands of home crowd,” he said.
Earlier, leaving for India, Ponting had yesterday said that India are a much tough opponent at home than when they are travelling.
White’s views were backed by Test regular Simon Katich, who though feels that Ponting’s men are a confident lot coming into the series, especially after their recent success in England and South Africa.
“I think the guys are very confident. They have performed very well in England as well as in the Champions Trophy in South Africa. Some of the guys in the team have played in IPL and in Champions League and know the conditions well,” Katich, who is the skipper of NSW, said.
Meanwhile, on tomorrow’s first semifinal encounter of the cash-rich Twenty20 tournament, both the NSW and the Victoria skippers feel the match would be a hard-fought affair but warned against expecting a high-scoring affair in the low and slow Feroz Shah Kotla wicket.
“It will be interesting to play Victoria in neutral venue. We have had lot of battles and good rivalry, so expect a tough game tomorrow,” Katich said.
“Hopefully, with Brett(Lee) in our side, we will draw more Indian support. But the match would be a low-scoring one because the earlier matches have shown that bowlers will have upperhand on this wicket,” he added.
White also expressed similar feelings, saying, “We know each other very well, the only thing is that we will be playing on a different venue than where we usually play each other. But it will be a hard pressure game.(source)
Senior Indian batsman Sachin Tendulkar feels Rahul Dravid’s inclusion after close to two years has added “value” to the ODI team and his experience would come in handy during the tri-series in Sri Lanka and the subsequent Champions Trophy in South Africa.
Driving his dream Hummer landed Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Singh in trouble on Tuesday, when he was fined by Chandigarh traffic police for using the vehicle without a valid number plate.
Bangalore Royal Challengers’ batsman Manish Pandey is happy to have achieved the feat of being India’s only IPL centurion, but is also wary of being tagged as a Twenty20 specialist.
India will recover quickly from their early exit at the Twenty20 World Cup and are certain to mount a serious challenge at the Champions Trophy in South Africa next month, coach Gary Kirsten said.
Master blaster Sachin Tendulkar has over 29000 runs to his credit in international cricket but the maestro is still not done with it and says that winning the 2011 World Cup is what he hopes to achieve.
Sachin Tendulkar has hit back at John Buchanan for finding faults in his batting technique against pace bowling and advised the former Australian coach to change his opinion which “doesn`t have to be right all the time”.
Indian squad for next month`s triangular ODI series in Sri Lanka and ICC Champions Trophy in South Africa would be picked on August 16 in Chennai.
Yusuf Pathan courted controversy with the BCCI by saying that his brother Irfan has been left out of the Champion’s Trophy squad because of reasons unrelated to cricket.
Coach of India’s World Twenty20 winning team of 2007, Lalchand Rajput, has urged Indian selectors to include former skipper Rahul Dravid in the one-day team for the tri-series in Sri Lanka in September as he is still a big asset to the team.