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Cricket
Skippers will be watched with interest
By K.C. Vijaya Kumar
BANGALORE, JAN. 9. Fire fighting. It often defines Indian sports and cricket is no exception. Down Under, Steve Waugh and Coach John Buchanan ask their players - `how high can we get ?' In Indian cricket, however, it's often a tale of how far you can look back. And looking back means pausing at 1983 and dusting pictures of Kapil Dev holding aloft the Prudential World Cup.
World Cup 2003 in South Africa beckons while Indian cricket's fine-print still hints at problems, the latest being
nine one-day finals with a `bridesmaid' tag.
However, January mixes hope with desire. And another hectic year begins with the Hero Honda N.K.P. Salve Trophy Challenger Series at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium from Wednesday with Sourav Ganguly's India Seniors testing V.V.S. Laxman's India A. The other team in the fray is the Anil Kumble-led India B and the final between the top two teams will be held on Sunday.
The day-night matches will be watched with keen interest as the selectors, along with coach John Wright and skipper Sourav Ganguly, will decide on the squad for the one- dayers against England. The squad will be announced on January 13.The skippers are also burdened with personal pressures. Sourav Ganguly's `God-outside-the-offstump' halo needs a fresh paint, V.V.S. Laxman has to move past the 281 nostalgia while Anil Kumble will be wary of talk about the selectors watching his leadership mettle.
The itinerary: Jan. 10: India Seniors vs India A; Jan. 11: India Seniors vs India B; Jan. 12: India A vs India B; Jan. 13: Final.
The teams:
India Seniors: Sourav Ganguly (capt.), S.S. Das, Virendra Sehwag, Hemang Badani, Sanjay Bangar, Deep Dasgupta (wk), Harbhajan Singh, Sunil Joshi, Tinu Yohannan, Iqbal Siddique, Debasis Mohanty and Jacob Martin.
India A: V.V.S. Laxman (capt.), Connor Williams, Daniel Manohar, Rohan Gavaskar, Sangram Singh, Yuvaraj Singh, Ajay Ratra (wk), Reetinder Singh Sodhi, Murali Kartik, Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Sarandeep Singh and Sitanshu Kotak.
India B: Anil Kumble (capt.), Mohammed Kaif, S. Sriram, Dinesh Mongia, Hrishikesh Kanitkar, Arjun Yadav, Z. Zufari, Vijay Bharadwaj, Pankaj Dharmani (wk), Ashish Nehra, S. Pandey, Amit Bhandari and Devendra Bundela.
Umpires: Messrs M.S. Mahal, S.C. Gupta, K. Hariharan and S.K. Sharma.
Match referee: Mr. Shashikant Khandkar.
Match timings: 2.30 p.m. to 6 p.m. and 6.45 p.m. to 10.15 p.m.
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