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Filed under India v Victoria

"133 runs made, 4 wickets lost. 48 overs played & not one delivery bowled by the bowlers" = India's report card from their only warm up match before the first test at Melbourne.

Certainly there isn't much to dig into this rain effected 3 day game against Victoria, which, of course, ended as draw. To make a couple of notes, (1) Victoria batsmen (specially captain David Hussey) appeared very curious about what kind of bats Indian batsmen were using & (2) the low standard ground (Junction Oval aka St. Kilda cricket ground) organized by Cricket Australia for this tour match. Had this 3 day match held at MCG (touring teams generally play warm-up game at 1st test venue itself), Indians would have at least got around 100 overs. The outfield at Junction Oval was too bulky, absorbing too much of water from overnight rain & thus this warm-up game never started on time despite relatively clear skys on first two days. groundsmen were cutting grass on 2nd morning but it was too late by then!

Final scores : India 133 for 4, 48 overs. Jaffer 0, Dravid 33*(146), Laxman 1, Tendulkar 19, Ganguly 56, Yuvraj 6*. Allan Wise 4 for 43.

Former Australia fast bowler - Paul Reiffel stood as an umpire in this match, which, understandably, made Commentator Wasim Akram wonder how a former fast bowler can have the patience as a match official. That said, Paul looked in command & did a fine job.

Now a good news - Melbourne weather report for Wednesday to Sunday (26-30 Dec 2007), the dates for Australia vs India 1st test match, says fine & clear. Indian team might not have had too many overs to bat & absolutely no overs to bowl in their warm-up match, but they've played enough cricket in the recent time to maintain high confidence level. As the rains continued, Indian boys made frequent trips to MCG indoor stadium, which provides various batting pitches from spin-friendly to fast tracks and made sure they earn required practice hours.. if not in the middle, than at least on artificial wickets!

I remember a VVS Laxman interview with Harsha Bhogle on India's 2003-04 trip to Australia, who talked about carrying the confidence of 167 he made on the last match of 1999 tour and also about how Sourav Ganguly's men planned to win ONE TEST MATCH that year. Indian team indeed won one test match on that 2003-04 tour (at Adelaide) and now on this 2007-08 tour - they're talking about winning the series.. where's my money? safe in my pocket!

Preview : India's warm-up match against Victoria

One last test of Dhoni's abilities!

Day 1 : Rainy welcome to raging Indians

48 overs & India ready for Melbourne