Dheeraj Jadhav tests himself against the best

Dheeraj Jadhav has been in action against international opposition. He opened the batting for a Mahashtra XI against Australia in a warm-up.

He scored one.

He's still only 27. Plenty of time for our rash prediction to come true...

India v England - third Test, day one

It's a start. 272-3 looks pretty darn impressive, but to win this match England are going to need a few more.

We've never called for the dropping of Andrew Strauss, but we have been disappointed with his winter form, so 128 here felt like a bonus.

One of the weirdest terrace chants we've ever heard championed Andrew Strauss. It was delivered by one solitary, near-lethally intoxicated, fat, shirtless, middle-aged fan at Old Trafford. It was sung to the tune of Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division and referred to Strauss's Waltz.

It went: "Straaauuss. He will waltz you around. Again." To truly replicate the effect you should ever-so-slightly gurgle the 'Strauss' part as you would if you were overburdened with phlegm. You should also sing the chant a capella, throughout the afternoon, to the general ambivalence and mild amusement of your fellow spectators. Nobody should join in and you should never. Ever. Stop. Finally, you should have the look of someone who would never have heard of Johann Strauss or Joy Division, let alone both.

We're a fan of Owais Shah's as well, so we weren't all that disappointed to hear of Alastair Cook's illness. Shah eventually had to retire on 50 due to hand cramps, but he should be back at some point tomorrow.

England should be aiming for a seriously big total, but there's every chance that early wickets will put that beyond them. If that happens expect the energy to visibly sap out of them and India to storm home.

Team-wise, Udal's playing which is a colossal disappointment, albeit an expected one, but to offset that, James Anderson's playing. We're enjoying actually having opinions these days, so we're going to say that James Anderson will win this game for England.

India v England – third Test, day four

A day for the purists out at the Wankhede stadium means that all three results are possible going into the final day. You can’t ask for more than that.

India bowled defensively for the most part, which paradoxically gave them the best chance of wickets. Whenever England tried to force the pace, trying to set India a target, they consistently got themselves out. They eventually limped into a lead of just over 300 and had just enough time to dispatch stand-in opener Irfan Pathan.

The Test Match Special team seem to be of the opinion that an Indian win is the least likely result bearing in mind the slow scoring rate of the game so far. We disagree. India have plenty of time to build a platform tomorrow and late in the day they can have a dart at the win if they feel secure. Virender Sehwag was off the field injured for a good proportion of day and consequently can’t bat until five wickets are down, however this does raise the prospect of a partnership with Mahendra Dhoni and with those two at the wicket, no total is too large.

There's no jokes in this post, so you'll just have to make up your own.

The Innocuoso spins England to victory

Can everybody spell 'capitulation'? India have just been bowled out for 100 after being 75-3. Two of those three wickets were lower order batsmen in Pathan and Kumble as well, so that's pretty much the whole Indian top order and two tail enders out for 25. PLUS there were two dropped catches. Never mind 'capitulation'. This was a farce.

We're positively choking on the vast wave of pleasure that's washing over us, but the Indian public won't be best pleased. Rahul Dravid's decision to ask England to bat will be pored over at great length and he won't come out of it well, especially when you consider that the batsman who was asked to face that first ball went on to make a match-winning century.

In terms of India's second innings, Shaun Udal was the hero with the heroic figures of 4-14. Are you ready for how fickle we can be? You'd better prepare yourselves. It's quite something... We love Shaun Udal. He's played a major part in an England victory and therefore joins the ranks of players who we just can't hate.

One of Udal's wickets was a particular highlight. Dhoni, caught Panesar, bowled Udal for 5 doesn't look that interesting on paper, but three balls prior to this Dhoni hit an absolute skier. Monty Panesar dithered around under it. Maybe he lost it. Maybe he thought that the mid-on fielder was coming for it. In any case he didn't lay a hand on it. It was humiliating and the crowd were roaring at him. Fortunately for Panesar, Dhoni, being of a charitable disposition (or possibly sadistic), gave him a second chance with another skier and he caught it this time before the rest of the England team descended on him as if he'd won the entire series.

England will be more than happy with a drawn series (India will be apopleptic). However we do look back on England's own catastrophe in the second Test in Mohali when they batted like 11 crippled badgers in the second innings. If they could have played out more time then perhaps they would be walking away with a series victory.

Ian Bradshaw: We know him now

We think we've got the measure of Ian Bradshaw. We always had problems remembering him and his name before, but now when we look at his name or a picture of him thoughts come into our head. Relevant thoughts.

Yesterday Ian Bradshaw took 3-30 as the Windies beat India after what somehow turned into a nervewracking finale. The West Indies had been dogged in the field. Never letting India get going. Then, when they batted, they seemed to be cruising to their target with only three wickets down.

Suddenly they lost four wickets in ten balls and seemed rather keen to self-destruct, but they just about kept it together and won with two balls to spare. It means England are out, but everyone had pretty much resigned themselves to that anyway - round about the time the squad arrived in India, actually.

Damien Martyn again

Australia knocked India out of the Champions' Trophy yesterday. We watched most of India's innings and they never really got going. You always thought that 249 probably wouldn't be enough. And it wasn't.

Australia chased it down with no real difficulty. Again, the top-scorer was Damien Martyn with 73 not out. We've never watched Damien Martyn bat in a situation where we weren't desperate for him to get out, so we've never really appreciated his style. We're dimly aware that he's 'classy', but we usually overlook that and just call him names whenever he's on TV.

Earlier, Glenn McGrath bowled his first four overs for just four runs and although he was still a bit pedestrian, Aussie fans shouldn't worry about the guy. There's definitely no danger of his being dropped for Nathan Bracken.

India wrap up one-day series

India today clinched the one-day series against Pakistan after winning the fourth match by five wickets. The most important contribution came from Rudra Pratap Singh, who took four Pakistani wickets for only 40 runs.

R P Singh joins a growing list of cack-handed Indian pace bowlers. For non-British readers, cack-handedness is the harrowing genetic flaw where a person has a preference for using their left hand.

Fellow favourers of the inferior arm in India's pace bowling legion are Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra and Irfan Pathan. Pathan is so good it doesn't bear thinking about what he could achieve if he bowled properly using his right arm.

This is how big cricket is in India

We'd like to think that this tale explains cricket's popularity in India better than a whole host of journalists saying "cricket's massive in India" would. It probably doesn't.

If this isn't sounding too promising, let us just say that we get marginally humiliated by an eight-year-old midway through the story, so stick with it.

When we were in India, we found that young boys came and talked to us a lot. Other people we were with didn't seem to attract the same attention. We can't really explain it because (1) we're really grumpy and (2) we hate talking to people.

On one particular journey in Karnataka, we found ourself sitting next to this boy on a bus. He was about eight and we just knew he was bursting to talk to us. We were tired and didn't want to, but he couldn't help himself. Fortunately, he turned out to be quite a nice bloke.

As ever in these situations, we started with 'what name?' and 'what country?' We were on fairly safe ground here. His third question rather put us on the back foot though: 'What are the major crops of your country?'

What would you say? We produce quite a lot of graffiti. That's not a crop though. Minor celebrities? It's a tricky one if you're quite stupid and uninformed. We're quite stupid and uninformed, so we turned the question back on him. He listed loads of stuff.

Next we moved onto 'how many languages do you speak?' We thought we'd done quite well by saying two. French GCSE counts if you're talking to an eight-year-old in rural India. He's unlikely to be fluent enough to catch you out. It turned out he didn't need to, because like just about everybody else in the world he spoke five languages. Round two to Shaun - for that's what he reckoned his name was. We're still doubtful.

We decided to steer the talk into safer waters because some people were laughing at us. Cricket. You can't go wrong with cricket. And we didn't.

Now here's the bit where you fully and instantaneously comprehend the importance of cricket in India. This kid's eight. He lives in the back of beyond and these are his favourite cricketers, in order: Anil Kumble (no surprises there); Shaun Pollock (we'll put it down to the shared name); Alan Mullally (weird); and Bruce French...

Bruce French? We've pored over scorecards since we were about four and we still took a minute to remember. How many eight-year-olds in the UK know who Bruce French is? How many adults know who Bruce French is? He was one of Shaun's favourite cricketers. Not Michael Vaughan or Andrew Flintoff. We checked. Bruce French.

For those who don't know him, here's Bruce French's Cricinfo profile. Even they don't know him that well.

Hello Shaun, if you're reading. Our favourite Indian cricketers are Kenia Jayantilal, Dhiraj Parsana and Ghulam Parkar.

Those Indian school kids and their world record partnership

A couple of people have contacted us to question why we haven't included a post about the recent world record partnership of 720 between B Manoj Kumar and Mohammed Shaibaaz Tumbi (spellings from Cricinfo) for St Peter's High School in Hyderabad.

Well, we didn't want to repeat ourself. We could have focused on the fact that cricket is a fantastic sport where schoolboys can set world records. We could have focused on Vinod Kambli who, together with Sachin Tendulkar, held the previous record of 664. Vinod Kambli played 17 Tests, averaged 54.20, but bizarrely gained no further Test recognition. We could even have focused on just what percentage of the two boys' shots went for four. They made 720 in just forty overs and didn't hit a single six.

What we actually would have done, would have been to describe the achievement thus, like we always do:

Imagine you're playing cricket on your own. You're throwing a ball against a wall and then hitting it. Every time you hit the ball, you rather generously give yourself six runs, even when you blatantly mis-hit it. Even then, with everything going your way and no rules to slow you down, it's really, really hard to score that many runs.

That way of looking at run-scoring feats applies almost universally. The only exception is Matthew Hayden's former world Test record score of 380 against Zimbabwe: Anyone could have done that. It was essentially a worthless achievement. A non-achievement, even.

Sourav Ganguly's in India's Test squad

Can. Of. Worms.

We heard a rumour about this yesterday, but we didn't think it was at all credible: Sourav Ganguly has been brought back into India's Test squad.

This is wrong. It really is. We've nothing against Ganguly, but the guy attracts extremes of emotion. Things were just starting to die down after he was axed as captain and subsequently dropped, but this is like filling a pan with napalm and putting it on the fire to simmer for a bit.

Plus he's kind of crap in Tests, or at least he had been for the last year or so in the national side. He's a more than decent one-day player, but even one-day selection would be a retrogressive step. India's hardly short of batting talent, even if their performances in their current series in South Africa haven't shown that. They just don't need him.

He performed badly in county cricket this season. We believe that he's made one hundred in Indian domestic cricket. All Ganguly's selection does is jab a huge, double-handed sword into an open, infected wound and wriggle it around a bit.

The other minus point is that we realised that we've always spelt his first name wrong, up until now. That makes us more upset than you might think.

India reverts to the class of 2003

Remember 2003? The US was going to war in Iraq. The UK was rocking to the sounds of 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love' by The Darkness and 'Laura' by Scissor Sisters. India had a batting line-up featuring Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman and Ganguly.

Well those days are back! At least cricket-wise. Let's all pretend it's 2003. The marketing men haven't made cider cool and there's no need for iPod 'docks'. We've still got our sweet job in the warehouse that makes us cry every morning and phones that play bits of video are more impressive than a thousand foot pyramid made entirely out of rubies.

Sreesanth rises to the challenge

We've been having a bit of a look back over the cricketing year and one of the abiding themes is the dominance of bat over ball. With Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne about to retire, things are becoming even more one-sided. So who's going to step forward and redress the balance?

One possible candidate, on current form, is Sreesanth of India. He only made his Test debut this year, against England, but he looks promising.

So far he's racked up 35 wickets at 24.40, but his recent form in India's tour of South Africa is what's drawn our attention of late. He played a major part in India winning the first Test - not something they manage all that often away from home. Sreesanth took 5-40 as South Africa were bowled out for 84 in their first innings. Now that's contributing to a victory. None of this '20 runs batting at eight' contributing.

In India's second Test defeat, he still performed, taking 4-109 and then 4-80. He's quick, which is no bad thing; keen, which is equally important; and he's prone to dancing and bat-twirling, which could go either way really - at least he's not Jaques Kallis.

It's early days, but sometimes you can get a decent idea from little information. Our first ever reference said something like: "He could probably achieve something if he ever finds himself doing something he's remotely interested in".

Virender Sehwag is dropped

India have got two home one-day internationals against the West Indies coming up. They've dropped Virender Sehwag for them.

Virender Sehwag's totally out of form at the minute. It must be particularly hard on him, because he's a real 'feel' player. We imagine that he usually feels like Mr Universe feeling extra-confident. He has a fairly unique approach to the game, which seems to be that almost every ball, good or bad, is there to be hit for four. How you recover that sort of form is beyond most people, so he's on his own.

Bizarrely, Virender Sehwag's one-day record is actually very ordinary. For a player who averages near-enough 50 in Tests and who scores his runs like every over's his last, his one-day average is unexpectedly poor - 31.28. He's played 163 one-day internationals, so it's not misleading.

We hope he gets his game sorted, because we really like him. He's one on his own is our Virender.

Sourav Ganguly gets run out for 98

Running people out when they're nearly 100 should be outlawed. It's too cruel for words. They're lucky to be walking unaided at that age, never mind sprinting quick singles.

You know what we mean though. Sourav Ganguly must be pretty irritated by getting run out for 98 today, even if he played a major hand in an Indian victory and went a fair way to getting his name inked in at the top of the Indian order for the World Cup. Batsmen deal in hundreds and he was as good as there.

We're still a bit unsure about Ganguly being reinstated in the Test team, but one-day-wise we've no problems with his presence. He's obviously been motivated by his previous omissions and he seems to have come back a rejuvenated player and arguably a better bloke.

It's not his team any more, but he can still play a part. Particularly in the World Cup.

Virender Sehwag: Take note.

PS: If anyone can do better than the 'eat your own spit' insult from the comments on our previous Sourav Ganguly post, fire away.

Small scores are still better - India agree

At least India agree with us today, because they won a low-scoring match. West Indies bowled India out for 189, but India defended it. We were only watching the scorecard and it was nailbiting. Low scores are better. Every run counts.

In hindsight, Dinesh Karthik and Ajit Agarkar's partnership was crucial. India were 90-7 when they came together and you don't win many games from that position. However, Karthik hit 63 and Agarkar a more than handy 40.

In reply, Shiv was the only West Indian batsman to offer resistance with 66. Everyone's favourite uncool spinner, Ramesh Powar took 3-42 for India. He's always worth a mention. In fact, let's make him the accompanying picture.

Being uncool is the new cool. At least that's what our girlfriend tells us.

Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif v England, 69 and 87 not out - 10 Great Innings

So again we're bending the rules. It's two players.

It was the final of the Natwest Series, a one-day competition featuring England, India and Sri Lanka. Amazingly, England had got to the final. Even more amazingly, they had set India 326 to win off 50 overs. Marcus Trescothick hit a hundred and so did Nasser Hussain. It was Hussain's only one-day hundred and the occasion when he 'gestured' at the press. It was something about batting at three. It was all a bit vague.

India started their reply reasonably well, but eventually fell to 146-5. They were 180 runs adrift with two young middle-order batsmen at the crease, Yuvraj Singh, then 20 and Mohammad Kaif, then 21. Perhaps England felt they'd done the hard work by getting down to India's sixth and seventh batsmen; two relative novices. If they thought they'd won the game, they were wrong.

What followed were two of the most perfect one-day innings imaginable. They were the kinds of innings that would be jaw-dropping if they came from 200 cap veterans. They were calm, played themselves in and raised their tempo as the run-rate climbed. Many a player before and since would have balked at the target and given up. Not these two.

Yuvraj Singh was out for 69, but Mohammad Kaif saw India home with 87 not out. Any batsman could have picked up tips as to how to go about a run-chase. These unflappable wise men were 20 and 21.

10 Great Innings

VVS Laxman v Australia, 281 - 10 Great Innings

This was unarguably one of the finest innings in history. What are we on about? It WAS the finest innings in history. Moan away in the comments all you want, but we know it was, you know it was and if you disagree, we're going to ignore you.

"VVS Laxman is having a ball," said Tony Greig while commentating at the time. What a ball. Can we come? Balls have never really appealed before, but if they're anything like this then we've all been missing out since the 1920s or whenever balls were in fashion.

Quite often we assume that you all know the facts surrounding an innings. This is one of those occasions, nevertheless, here's the background. Australia are playing India at Eden Gardens in Kolkata, busiest and noisiest of all the Test venues. Australia bat first and make 445. In reply, India are bowled out for just 171 and Australia ask them to bat again.

India require 274 runs to so much as escape without an innings defeat. Their first innings was over a hundred runs short of that, but here's the key: VVS Laxman had been the only batsman to pass 50. He batted at six. In the second innings, as the only batsman showing even the faintest hint of form, he's promoted to three. Turns out he got his eye in during that 50.

VVS Laxman bats. And he bats. And he bats. And he bats. He bats his way to a hundred. He bats his way to a double hundred. When he's eventually dismissed, he has 281 runs and he's put India into a position where they will go on and win the game.

It was incredible because India were down and out; and torn and tattered; and battered and bruised and beaten. It was incredible because of the way Laxman played. It was incredible because he managed to play that way for so, so long.

There were 44 fours, most of which appeared to be directed at particular blades of grass, they were so accurately judged. Some were just impudent; the kind of shots that only the most gifted can play. Shane Warne bowled one ball from round the wicket which pitched well wide of leg-stump. VVS Laxman skittered around it and arrowed it through the off-side. It was absolutely incredible. Then he just carried on.

Rahul Dravid deserves a nod as well for his 180, without which none of this could have happened. You couldn't pick a better player for that role.

10 Great Innings

Rahul Dravid hits 10,000 one-day international runs

In a day!

No, just 66 today as India beat Sri Lanka. All the same, Rahul Dravid's still a remarkable batsman. He's always been slightly overshadowed by Sachin Tendulkar. Being only slightly overshadowed by Sachin is no mean achievement, but we wonder how things will look when they each call time on their respective careers.

Dravid's got about three months on Tendulkar, but Tendulkar having been the prodigy that he was, has played a few more matches in both forms of the game. Not a great many more. Dravid's played 107 Tests and 308 one-dayers. Tendulkar's played 135 Tests and 380 one-dayers.

Tendulkar's hit 35 Test hundreds to Dravid's 23 and 41 one-day hundreds to Dravid's mere 12. Tendulkar of course tends to bat further up the order in one-dayers, so this is understandable.

Tendulkar's also hit almost 5,000 more one-day runs than Dravid at about 45 compared to Dravid's average of 40.

It's the Test statistics that interest us though. Tendulkar has 10,668 Test runs, Dravid 9,174. Not a big difference and Dravid's average is actually higher - 57.33 to Tendulkar's 54.70.

In a sense it's pointless to compare the two, because taken against almost every other international batsman, they're streets ahead. On the other hand, Dravid's Test record seems to be going from strength to strength, while Tendulkar's is currently waning.

Tendulkar's greatest asset over the years has been his consistency, but Rahul Dravid just keeps on scoring. We're not revising our list of greats just yet, but maybe we should give it some thought over the next couple of years. See how things pan out.

We're sorry about all the statistics, by the way. If it's any consolation, we got quite bored copying them down.

Dinesh Karthik and Wasim Jaffer show the way

The start of this Test was dominated by swing bowling. The feeling that England's batsmen had rather meekly submitted was born out by the performances of Dinesh Karthik and Wasim Jaffer.

Never mind that Tendulkar and Ganguly outscored both of India's openers, that first partnership was key. This was when England's bowlers were bowling at their best, but with each delivery that went by, the pair were making life easier for the middle order.

Tendulkar and Ganguly both batted well, but Dinesh Karthik and Wasim Jaffer gave them the best opportunity to do so.

Karthik's not a batsman we know all that well (we've heard he's a superior wicketkeeper to Dhoni, which is handy) but Jaffer's an opener of some talent. He's been in and out of the side with clockwork regularity and we still fear for him.

A good old-fashioned blunting the new ball innings of 62 here will soon become just an innings of 62 shorn of context. Some other opener will thrash a one-day hundred against Zimbabwe and steal his place.

We know this post's dry and humourless. It's Monday morning. We're just getting our eye in. We don't want to be making any loose jokes outside off-stump when we're still vulnerable to the moving

Zaheer Khan's bowling secret

Zaheer Khan took 4-59 and 5-75 in the second Test against England. Just what is his secret?

• Swing the ball both ways
• Land the ball on the spot
• Keep doing it
• Do it a bit more
• Bit more
• ...Mmm... Bit more...

Also, don't discount his productive year in county cricket last season while in exile from the Indian national side.