Hello, Third World!

(from the CricInfo commentary)

Hayden has issues with the sightscreen. So we have a delay.

Well this is shabby. Opening over of a Test in Australia and these legends can't get the sight screen fixed.

More issues with the sight screen.

A really poor over-rate, that sight screen is the main cause. Billy Bowden walks down and brushes debris off the pitch. This has been slow going this morning.

So, Sydney joins Brisbane in the list of Third World grounds in the world according to Matthew Hayden!

Just for kicks..

With the year drawing to a close and Bangladesh fighting in the first test against Sri Lanka and the West Indies New Zealand game washed off, I decided to put together an India Second XI

India First XI

Gautam Gambhir
Virender Sehwag
Rahul Dravid
Sachin Tendulkar
VVS Laxman
Yuvraj Singh
MS Dhoni (c)
Zaheer Khan
Harbhajan Singh
Amit Mishra
Ishant Sharma

India Second XI

Murali Vijay
Shikhar Dhawan
Cheteshwar Pujara
Rohit Sharma
S Badrinath (c)
Virat Kohli
Dinesh Karthick
Irfan Pathan
Munaf Patel
Piyush Chawla
L Balaji

Honorable mentions - Ajinkya Rahane, Tanmay Srivastava, Suresh Raina, Md Kaif (c), Venugopal Rao, Manoj Tiwary, Abhishek Nayar, Parthiv Patel, S. Sreesanth, Siddharth Trivedi, Mohnish Parmar.

HAPPY NEW YEAR !

It began with a furore...

and has ended with another.

What a year, Ricky Ponting!