Australia's strong batting performance on the first day of their match against the Board President's XI in Mohali had no impact on former India captain Sourav Ganguly's view as to how the forthcoming Test series will go. Ganguly said, "India will win the series if they bat well."

Regardless of India's revolving-door bowling attack, Ganguly said the venues of the two-Test series help the home team maximise its spin resources. "Bangalore may not offer assistance early for spinners, but there's a bit for them later and Mohali has always been a good venue for us", Ganguly said at the India Today Youth Summit in Delhi this afternoon.

He picked Suresh Raina and Cheteshwar Pujara as the leaders of the next generation of Indian batsmen who have it in them to go the distance. Raina, while inexperienced in the Test format, has shown great improvement according to Ganguly. Pujara, picked for the first time in the Indian team to play Australia, has what Ganguly called a "terrific attitude towards batting. I've seen him with the [Kolkata] Knight Riders and he can bat all day, he just loves it."

As India's strong middle-order draws closer to the end of its era, the team, Ganguly said, had plenty of options. "There is talent in Murali Vijay; there is talent in Yuvraj Singh. There are many other young players who have got talent, but it's what they do with that talent that is important."

Ganguly, who was captain of the Indian team that kicked off India's now-celebrated rivalry with the Australians in 2001, said his advice to current India captain M S Dhoni did not include making Ricky Ponting wait for the toss, a habit which had incensed Steve Waugh in the 2001 series. "The series is going to be really enjoyable and Ricky's a great guy", he said.

Ponting and Ganguly were teammates at the Kolkata Knight Riders for the last three years, an association that will most probably end when the IPL hosts its latest player auction later this year. Ganguly said he agreed with Sachin Tendulkar about maintaining and building a team, but thought the IPL had "done well to leave player retention in the franchises hand, to make it their decision".

The most essential ingredient of every franchise's team, according to Ganguly, was "identity". He said, "So what happens if Tendulkar doesn't play for Mumbai? If Tendulkar plays for Bangalore then it looks like something different, doesn't it?"

As one of the speakers in the Youth Summit, Ganguly's brief speech was followed by an exchange with an audience made up mostly of university students. He spoke openly of the time he took over as India captain in 2000, which is when the match-fixing controversy first broke. "We had some worries once the news came out in the open. We would speak to each other but none of us knew what to do, or to deal with the situation - we'd not been approached or anything."

The six month break between seasons that followed made a difference, Ganguly said. "The BCCI decided to take players off the team and we got a lot of youngsters into the side. So we didn't have to deal with those issues, but we had it at the back of our mind".

Ganguly said he had not come across any experience to say that matches were fixed "in my entire cricketing life personally, and I can vouch for that ... Now I presume those guys, they know whom to approach. It's not just about Pakistani cricketers but players all around the world. Maybe they can just judge someone's character and know they might get through to one player and not another".

When he was asked if would ever like to coach the Indian team, Ganguly said, "Yes, not very shortly but at some stage of my life. I would really want to do it because anything connected with Indian cricket is an honour".

Ganguly also replied to a question about a 'five-point programme' on coaching that he would give to Greg Chappell, who had a controversial tenure as India coach from 2005 to 2007. "Don't be too friendly with the media," Ganguly said, "be honest with the players and don't talk to them through the media, always work with players, get confidence out of players and stay on the backstage. The captain is the boss of the team."

'India will win the series if they bat well' - Ganguly

Yuvraj Singh dropped, Cheteshwar Pujara gets maiden call-up

Yuvraj Singh has been dropped for next month's Test series against Australia with Cheteshwar Pujara, the Saurashtra batsman who has been scoring heavily in domestic and other first-class cricket, replacing him. The selectors, who met in Chennai on Monday, made one more unexpected decision in dropping Karnataka seamer Abhimanyu Mithun, who impressed the team management in Sri Lanka in the absence of Zaheer Khan and Sreesanth.


Zaheer and Sreesanth both made comebacks from injury, along with Harbhajan Singh and Gautam Gambhir. All four missed India's series-levelling win at the P Sara Oval last month. Zaheer and Harbhajan were part of Mumbai Indians' unsuccessful campaign in the Champions League T20 in South Africa. Gambhir and Sreesanth began their return in the Corporate Trophy and will continue it in the three-day game between the Board President's XI and the Australians, starting September 25 in Chandigarh.

Kris Srikkanth, the chairman of selectors, said "everything - form, fitness" was considered while picking the squad. On Pujara's selection, he said, "He has done well in the last two domestic seasons, and on sheer weight of performance he has muscled his way in. All cricket - domestic, A tours, international - was given weightage."

It was indeed getting increasingly difficult to ignore Pujara, a run-machine in domestic cricket. He first caught headlines in 2006-07, when he scored 600 first-class runs at an average of 50. It was just the beginning of the Pujara story: he went on to pile up centuries in the next three first-class seasons, averaging 53.35, 65.56 and 82.33. The A tour of England earlier this year, when he scored an unbeaten double-century, perhaps sealed the deal. He will be playing the tour game against the Australians to try and convince the selectors they have made the right call.

Yuvraj, meanwhile, has been asked to lead the Rest of India side in the Irani Cup clash against Mumbai, which starts the same day as the first Test against Australia.

His last Test assignment summed up the kind of unfortunate year he has had. After being dropped for the Asia Cup, his first limited-overs axing since he became a regular in the early 2000s, he made a satisfactory comeback to the Test side in Sri Lanka. He scored a century in the tour game even as others struggled, and then went onto score a fifty in the first Test. Before the second Test, he came down with fever, and Suresh Raina made full use of the opportunity, scoring a match-saving century, and keeping the place for the final Test. From the sidelines, amid water-boy chants, he saw India level the series. The lacklustre tri-series that followed in Sri Lanka didn't help Yuvraj's case.

It is clear now that Raina is the preferred No. 6 batsman in the Indian line-up and, had Yuvraj been in the squad, there was a good chance he would be sitting out the first Test in Mohali. It is reliably learnt that the selectors agreed Yuvraj needed to spend more time in the middle rather than on the Indian bench, an experience that would be of greater benefit to a more inexperienced batsman like Pujara. Yuvraj's match practice will, they hope, turn his form around in time for the one-day series against Australia that follows the two Tests.

One selector said Yuvraj would be India's "trump card" at the World Cup and the team needed him to be at his best in February. It is not known whether any of the selectors, team management or captain Dhoni had informed Yuvraj about their plan in advance.

India squad MS Dhoni (capt. & wk), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Suresh Raina, Cheteshwar Pujara, M Vijay, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma, Pragyan Ojha, Sreesanth and Amit Mishra

Rest of India squad Yuvraj Singh (capt.), Abhinav Mukund, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli, S Badrinath, Saurabh Tiwary, Parthiv Patel (wk), Piyush Chawla, R Ashwin, Jaydev Unadkat, Umesh Yadav, R Vinay Kumar, Manish Pandey, Abhimanyu Mithun and Ravindra Jadeja

Chennai pip Warriors, both make semi-finals

It's not often that both contestants of a sporting encounter celebrate at the end of a match. That strange sight was on offer in Port Elizabeth after Chennai Super Kings prevailed over Warriors in a tense league match, paving the way for both teams to reach the semi-finals of the Champions League Twenty20 at the expense of Victoria.

Chennai's chances seemed to have evaporated when they stumbled to 136 after choosing to bat in a must-win match, but on a spin-friendly track their strategy of packing the team with slow bowlers paid off as they tenaciously defended that total to set up an all-IPL semi-final against Royal Challengers Bangalore in Durban.

Briefly, midway through the chase, it looked as though an IPL team would break the hearts of the home crowd for the second day in a row but it was the Chennai fans who faced some panicky moments when Justin Kreusch and Mark Boucher revived the Warriors with a 44-run fourth-wicket stand.

Two Boucher sixes off Shadab Jakati left Warriors needing a gettable 32 off three overs with seven wickets remaining and two set batsmen at the crease. Chennai's edginess was shown by Muttiah Muralitharan's tirade at S Badrinath after a run-out chance was muffled following some kamikaze running between the wickets in the 16th over.

R Ashwin, battered in the Super Over against Victoria, then returned to virtually ensure David Hussey's side will be returning home early. His carrom ball worked to perfection in the 18th over, foxing both Kreusch and Boucher, to swing the game Chennai's way, though a four in between raised the biggest cheer of the day as it confirmed Warriors' qualification - they needed 109 to seal a place in the final four. Chennai's key bowlers, Doug Bollinger and Murali, then held their nerve against Warriors' non-specialist batsmen to preserve their team's 100% record of progressing from the league phase of every tournament they have played in so far.

Victoria would never have felt more confident of making the semi-finals than when Warriors captain Davy Jacobs was batting in his usual thrill-a-minute style to power the chase of a seemingly inadequate target early on. Jacobs survived in the second over when the ball rolled off his bat onto the stumps and Warriors confidently progressed to 38 for 1 in the Powerplays, but Chennai clawed back after that.

Shadab Jakati and Murali choked the runs, before Jacobs fell to a well-judged overhead catch from Michael Hussey at deep midwicket. Three overs later, Suresh Raina's magic arm earned a wicket with his third delivery to further slow down the home team. In seven overs after the Powerplays, Warriors made only 28 and lost two major wickets, pushing the asking rate to double digits. The game then tilted the Warriors' way before Ashwin's intervention proved decisive.

Chennai's bowlers saved the blushes of a highly rated batting unit, which struggled against a disciplined home side. Warriors have five bowlers with international experience in their line-up but it was the sixth, medium-pacer Kreusch, who made the biggest impact. His no-frills wicket-to-wicket bowling fetched him three wickets and ruined the platform Chennai's openers, Hussey and M Vijay, had constructed.

The other impressive Warriors bowler was Johan Botha, one of the tournament's most economical, who again handcuffed the opposition and dismissed Hussey in the 14th over, one ball after he reached his half-century, to change the course of the innings. From what was a potentially threatening 94 for 2, Chennai could only scrape 20 runs in the next five overs, when they should have been launching an all-out attack.

Chennai's openers had made a rock-solid start, setting up their side for what should have been a far more challenging target. Vijay was the dominant partner in a 63-run stand. Hussey was more circumspect early on, knocking the singles around - his first stroke of aggression as in the fifth over, charging down and lofting Lonwabo Tsotsobe towards long-on. A powerful reverse-sweep for four followed off Nicky Boje, before he started peppering his favourite midwicket region. There were only two dot balls in his final 21 deliveries.

His dismissal, however, sandwiching those of Raina and S Badrinath to Kreusch, derailed Chennai. They got going again only in the 19th over, when MS Dhoni clubbed 17 runs off Tsotsobe, including a giant six over midwicket. In a low-scoring encounter, 136 proved enough.

The result was a hard pill to swallow for Victoria, who are eliminated despite losing only one match in the tournament.

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