An exciting series ahead....

There will be feeling of nerves when India take on England at the Mecca of Cricket"The Lord"s" which will mark the 2000th & the 100th test between both the sides. What excites me the most is to see how the Indians get acclimatised to the English conditions and hence perform to their best. Indians are a bit fortunate in the sense that they are touring England in the hot summer rather than the early English summer when the ball swings a lot both ways,challenging and thus bringing out the best from the players. As the trend goes, players especially from the sub-continent find it difficult to cope up with the early English summer as was evident from the recently concluded n-Power series between the Poms and Sri Lankans where most of the time,the weather used to decide the result. The ball swinging,seaming and bouncing made life tough for the Lankan batsmen. Thanks to Kumar Sangakkara for playing a gem of an innings by scoring a ton at Rose Bowl on a wicket which was too seam friendly. That was a perfect quintessence as to how quality batsmen will shine immaterial of the nature of the pitch. If the heavens open up at Trent Bridge and Kennington Oval, it can prove to be a real nightmare for the Indian batsmen.

    There will be some interesting battles and war of words to watch out for. It will be quite interesting to see how a Gambhir tackles a Swann who has proved to be extremely dicey to the left-handers of late. Chris Tremlett has asked the curators to prepare lively wickets which will assist pace and bounce and hence, will be raring to go. It will be a real test for him when he bowls to the Indian top order despite the conditions. The preparation of a lively bouncy pitch for India has backfired the opposition of late.IND got thrashed by the Proteas at Centurion in the 1st test. After that their skipper Graeme Smith asked for a more bouncy wicket at Durban(2nd most bounciest wicket only next to Perth) which backfired and ultimately India won. Indians will be mainly wary of the Anderson threat who is extremely baleful with his late swing.Another thing to watch out for is Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott. Personally, I have been very impressed with Trott"s temperament. He is a tough man with a never die attitude and seems to be of Rahul Dravid"s temperament. Trott is the only batsman in the world cricket now to average more than 50 both in ODIs and Tests. The partnership of Cook-Trott can really hurt the Indians if they keep going. It will be quite interesting to see what combination of bowlers does MSD adopt for. A Zak,Ishant,Sreesanth combo followed by a spinner in Bhajji looks fine,solid and decent. Uncertainty still remains over Sehwag"s return and if he is back and bats for a day,then India will be close to a win. It will be good to see the likes of Harsha Bhogle,Ravi Shastri and Nasser Hussain in the commentary panel.

     The moment all of us are eagerly waiting for is Sachin getting his 100th ton in the home of cricket"The Lord"s". What an achievement that will be!A 100 at Lord"s is always special.

     So who will claim the no.1 spot in tests? According to ICC,if Eng beat Ind by 2-0 or 3-1,then they will move to the top of the table. It will be clear by 22nd Aug,2011.
    So wait for the 2000th test,100th encounter between ENG and IND and the 100th ton from Sachin at Lord"s. Keeping fingers crossed.