Today was "recovery day".
We woke up late after a big NYE night! Walked to Darling Harbour for a great lunch mainly consisting of seafood fare. Took the monorail to Pitt Street from there to check if the shops would be open. In true Aussie fashion, they weren't. So we just walked to the Opera House, around to Maquarie's Chair (which happens to be the only spot (on land) from where you can photograph the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge and the Sunset in the one frame). Took some pictures from there (for the millionth time). Walked back to the Opera House and sipped on some Mojito's at the Opera Bar (probably my favorite bar in the world!!).
Had had enough of walking by then, so cabbed back to Chinatown for a fab Korean dinner. I stuck to a fairly basic meal while the rest of the boys experimented with some spicy hot-pot soup style stuff. The consensus was that there might be a holocaust of sorts in their room tonight... (did I mention I was glad to be on the couch!!!).
Ended the night with a light round of Poker.
Over to cricket tomorrow. SCG - a ground we've done fairly well at. However, if our performance is anything like in Melbourne, we have another think coming. Before the match itself there are a couple of things pissing me off...
1) On the news here tonight, they mentioned that word from the Indian camp is that we're going to stick to the same line up.... GOD HELP US!!! Also Zaheer has an injury scare... GOD REALLY HELP US!!!!
2) They showed some video shots of both teams going through their drills. The Aussie team looked focused and intense in their practices. Everyone was running about, looking involved and serious. On the other hand, the shots of the Indians showed the following - (a) Ganguly dropping a skier, (b) Karthik missing the stumps from 10m away, (c) I-don't-know-who misfielding, (d) Other players milling around, catching up on the latest gossip and so on.
3) Harbhajan has made another foot in the mouth statement. He claims he has Ponting's number. The last thing we want is to get Ponting any more determined than he already is to do well in the Sydney test!
4) Lalchand Rajput has made a statement that there's a problem with Yuvraj's attitude... GIVE ME A BREAK.... You're the fucking team manager. Handle team issues within the fucking team!!!!
These are things that make me feel like even in the unlikely event that we go on to win the test, we're not poised to be a great team in the foreseeable future. What's particularly sad about that is the fact that in the past 10 odd years, we've had 4 of the world's top 10 test batsmen in our team, but we haven't achieved anything bar a marginally improved away record (which, by the way, is driven by our bowling and what's more, our home record has slipped a bit - so go figure!).
But then it's the new year... we should be expecting new things I suppose???? Spoken more in hope than in conviction.
3 comments:
Dude have faith. We'll bounce back with Dravid scoring the fastest triple hundred on record.
India's away record in the last ten years has been more than "slightly" better I dare say. Can't think of any team outside of Australia with a better away record? Even Sri Lanka got hammered in Australia man.
dude - agree - but the gap between us and Aus is just way too much. It's like saying quality of life in India is better than Rwanda (with due respect) so we should be happy...
Well if I am not mistaken, the last few test series in Australia have been virtual sweeps - Windies, South Africa, England, Sri Lanka and of course, the ICC world XI have all been hammered thoroughly in Australia (2-0, 5-0 and thereabouts)... The gap between Australia and the rest of the world is truly bizarre.... Its as if they're playing a different species of humans... Or a different material of mud .. who knows.
Have faith is all I can say.
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