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Battered after Boxing Day

Three years ago, the curator in Nagpur was accused of preparing an "Australian" pitch - it did have a smattering of grass and offer good bounce, without bearing any resemblance to the WACA of old - after the visitors cruised to the 342-run win that gave them a first series win in India since the days of Neil Armstrong's moonwalk.

India must fight the good fight

At Hobart last month, Australia set Sri Lanka 507 for victory and were given a real scare as Kumar Sangakkara played the innings of his career, a sparkling 192 where he paid scant respect to Lee, Johnson, Clark or MacGill. Sri Lanka finished 96 short, and were left to rue the fact that there would be no third Test to try and exploit the frailties that they had exposed.

Clark leads the python job

As clinical Australian bowling exposed the chinks in India's batting armour, you couldn't help but think of the geniuses in the Indian board that ratified this itinerary. It's every coach's favourite adage: Fail to prepare, and you prepare to fail. India's preparation for this mammoth task consisted of a week of acclimatisation - some players spent days sleeping off the jetlag - and one warm-up game that lasted 48 overs. It was almost as farcical as stepping into the ring with George Foreman (circa 1973) after having sparred a couple of rounds with Coco the Clown.

The Bat feeds his addiction

To say that Matthew Hayden loves the MCG is a bit like saying that Doug Walters liked his pint. In nine Tests at the greatest venue in the game, Hayden now has six centuries and his 124 on Boxing Day pushed his average up near to 80. After a circumspect start by his bullying standards, he reverted to type after lunch, going from 50 to three figures in just 46 balls.

A gripping opening round

We can only hope that the rest of the series lives up to an opening act as gripping as the first frames from The Day of the Jackal. If Boxing Day at the MCG was any indicator, this could be a terrific series between the two best sides in the game. Forget the rankings and what they say - though in this case, they tend to concur - but India against Australia has become the game's premier contest. Steve Waugh said it after his farewell Test, and the fact that India are the only team to go toe-to-toe with Australia over the past decade bears out his assessment.

Which way should India go?

In less than 48 hours, India's gladiators will walk into a wall of noise at cricket's Circus Maximus, bidding to stop a team that has been well nigh unstoppable in its last 14 Tests. With back-to-back series wins against England and Pakistan, India are in search of a unique treble, but realists will tell you that even a stalemate over the four Tests will see them acclaimed as the greatest Indian side of all.

Monty got a raw deal

In the days and weeks to come, when England's abysmal performance in Sri Lanka is analysed down to the bare bones, one of the likely scapegoats will be Monty Panesar, whose eight wickets cost him more than 50 apiece. Not even Monty's biggest fan could argue that he bowled well, but he was by no means the worst of an insipid bunch. And he certainly isn't the first fine spinner to struggle on Sri Lankan pitches. Logic though usually goes for a flighted toss once the bloodletting begins, and when the knives come out for Monty, people would do well to remember the words made famous by Michael Stipe and REM: "Nonsense has a welcome ring, and heroes don't come easy."

Bowling, Shane!

Just over a fortnight ago, the doosra asked you to pick the greatest spinner of all time. Over 1800 people voted, and the result is pretty conclusive. The two perfect-10 men, Jim Laker and Anil Kumble, got their fair share of votes, but the leaders of the pack are miles ahead. More than one in three plumped for the elastic wrists and guile of Muttiah Muralitharan, but the winner by a distance - with nearly half the votes - is the man who was known as the Sheik of Tweak and Hollywood amongst other things. When we look back on the 1990s and much of the first decade of the new millennium, one of the enduring images will be of an Australian wicketkeeper shouting: "Bowling, Shane" after a legbreak, flipper or zooter had bamboozled the batsman.

India tune up for Boxing Day

As practice matches go, they don't come much tougher than Victoria, even if it's at the Junction Oval in St Kilda rather than the MCG. The Bushrangers are having a wonderful season, having won four of six Pura Cup games, and India will feel slightly cheated that they can't take on the full-strength side. Shane Harwood, the fast bowler on the fringes of Australian selection, is out injured, as is Gerard Denton, the bowling star for the side with 28 wickets at just 16.10 this season.

Experience is India's trump card

Over the past couple of years, the Indian batting's Fab Four have attracted as many brickbats as they have bouquets. And despite consistent performances from three of them this year - Rahul Dravid, usually Mr Dependable, has been the one who's struggled - there are still many that still doubt their ability to cope against an Australian attack that shows no sign of letting up despite the exit of Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath.

Seam-up Kumble enlivens drawn Test

The Bangalore Test was drifting to an uneventful conclusion when Anil Kumble decided to bounce Faisal Iqbal, who had made the most of fielders being in the circle to stroke a brisk half-century. Faisal responded with the pull, but was in a horrible position to play it. The top edge looped to mid-on where Ishant Sharma made no mistake. As Faisal trudged off, the scoreboard read 144 for 4. Pakistan were never going to get the 374 needed from 48 overs, but with just over 16 overs to be bowled, there appeared to be no immediate danger of defeat.

Christmas comes early for Sehwag

No Indian team selection is ever uneventful, and that was certainly the case today when Niranjan Shah, the board secretary, announced the squad of 16 to play four Tests against an Australian team that have now won 14 on the bounce. Journalists quietly scribbled down the names till Shah got to the 14th one on the list. "Virender Sehwag," he said, and there were audible gasps all around the room. Sehwag hasn't played a Test since Cape Town last January, and wasn't even among the 24 probables that the board had announced before the Bangalore Test.

Ganguly leads Indian push for victory

Realistically, one team can win this Test from here, but it remains to be seen whether India will push for victory or hold on to the 1-0 lead that they have in the series. Given that they haven't won at home against Pakistan since the days when Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly were in short pants, there's unlikely to be a wildly adventurous declaration, but if they can go along at a run-a-minute till half an hour before lunch, you might just see Pakistan being set 300 to win in about 65 overs. Geoff Lawson, the Pakistan coach, said they'd go for the runs, provided the target wasn't "ridiculous".

Yousuf loses his rag, and a familiar rescue act

So, another Test appears to be going the Kolkata route, though the pitch at the Chinnaswamy Stadium could yet have a few surprises in store. The odd ball is shooting through, and batting in the third and fourth innings could almost be as difficult as it was at Mumbai in 2004, when the two strongest batting line-ups in the world lasted less than three days.

Some lessons are never learnt

In the home series against South Africa, Pakistan went in with a four-man bowling attack. It was a gamble on a placid surface, and When Mohammad Asif aggravated a shoulder problem, the other three were left to carry the can. Jacques Kallis pillaged them remorselessly and a series was lost.

The comeback kid

Yuvraj Singh's fabulous strokeplay and Sourav Ganguly's magnificent mocking of Father Time may well comprise the highlights when this Test is viewed years from now, but the story of Irfan Pathan shouldn't be allowed to become a sideshow. Apart from Vinoo Mankad and Kapil Dev, India had never produced a world-class allrounder, and it certainly doesn't have any in the pipeline who are remotely in Pathan's class.

Who is the greatest spinner ever?

It's become commonplace each time the relative merits of Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne are discussed to use the descriptor: the greatest spinner ever. Such sweeping statements though border on the disrespectful and ignore the claims of some of the game's greats. Even if you overlook 19th century titans like Bobby Peel and Johnny Briggs on the grounds that no one even saw grainy newsreel footage of them in action, there are at least a half a dozen others with claims to top-dog status.

Bill O'Reilly, whose battles with Don Bradman illuminated Australian domestic cricket between the wars, would feature in any such discussion, as would a Yorkshireman, Hedley Verity. South Africa's Hugh Tayfield ploughed a lone furrow for years, and many still get misty-eyed about India's legendary spin quartet.

The Doosra offers up nine names - there will, no doubt, be many complaints over the exclusion of Abdul Qadir and Derek Underwood - and invites you to pick your number one. The stats say that Murali and Warne are a class apart. Do you agree?

Voting has now closed, and below are the results:

The magic of Murali, the rice and dal man

As the day's play progressed, with Chaminda Vaas and Dilhara Fernando doing the early damage, you wondered when his moment would come. With Muttiah Muralitharan and Tests at home in Kandy, it's always been a matter of when, rather than if. It was almost inevitable therefore that the match would be decided by two moments of mesmerising spin bowling from a man who was once again the difference between two closely-matched sides.

The Yo-Yo effect keeps India at bay

The gulf between the two sides during the current series can largely be attributed to one thing - the failure of Pakistan's big boys to come out and play. They were left to rely on Misbah-ul-Haq and Kamran Akmal for first-innings safety, but once Munaf Patel produced a magnificent cutter to dismiss Misbah soon after lunch on the final day, the two Ys had no place to hide. As it turned out, they had no intention of doing so, and a sprightly 136-run partnership ensured safety and a draw long before Anil Kumble strode up to shake Younis Khan's hand.

An Indian win, a draw or a fairytale?

Scenario one: Given how slowly the pitch has played for four days, the smart man would put his money on the meandering draw, but an Indian win can't be completely ruled out just yet. If they can come out and clatter some quick runs as they did against Australia on the final day in 2001, it will leave Pakistan with around 75 minutes to negotiate before lunch, and a total of around 80 overs to survive. The pitch is hardly vicious, but the odd ball is taking off from the rough, and some batsmen may be undone by confusion - whether to play freely, or go into defensive, match-saving mode.

England have learnt nothing from Australia

Some things, it seems, never change, and one of cricket's great certainties is that Muttiah Muralitharan will bowl a game-changing spell on his home pitch in Kandy. The venue might not always have been kind to Sri Lanka, but Murali's record there is spellbinding. And after a confident start, England's batsmen were the latest to be snared by his wiles.

Batsmen forever at Eden

Indian fans could be forgiven a few jitters when they look at the scorecard at the close of day three in Kolkata. There are eerie similarities between this Test and that epic one in 2001, when India overcome the most tremendous odds against one of the greatest teams in the history of the game. Now, it's Pakistan in the position that India were in then, having lost the first Test and with an apparently insurmountable mountain in front of them in the second.