I think Australia will win at the WACA to make the Adelaide Test a dead rubber. This could be important (probably not though) as they have a much better chance on the flat Adelaide wicket for the fourth Test. At the WACA though, even if it is only as quick as it was last year the Indian batsmen will struggle. The only one who survived on the quicker, bouncier wickets (relative to India and the rest of Australia) last summer was Dravid, but now he looks like he’s not quite reacting quickly enough to full and straight balls. If he is undone with the rest of his colleagues by the pace of the WACA (as I think is very likely) it will hardly matter how the Australian batsmen fare.
England will have to work a bit in the UAE. We already knew this, or at least strongly suspected it, of course, but the warmup matches are bearing it out. The middle order are yet to really get going and whilst hopefully the different atmosphere and mentality of a Test match will help, it does appear that the going will be difficult for the batsmen. Because it’s only a warmup it’s hard to know how big of a problem it will be, but I’m still confident we can overcome it and win the series.
The ECB are wankers.
Saeed Ajmal announced that he has a new delivery and Graham Gooch has said that he isn’t bothered. I can’t blame Goochie, the last time a new ‘mystery’ delivery was actually effective was during that Warne/Murali era and even Warne still got most of his wickets by just turning the ball square. Right now when I think of a mystery delivery I think of the massively unimpressive Ajantha Mendis. Graeme Swann’s success comes without any weird deliveries and Ajmal is perfectly capable of doing the same.
Defensive Indifference 