Heena Sharma Blog

  India have not named their playing XI for the fourth Test against Australia and will be announcing it on Friday before the match starts at The Gabba as they are monitoring the injuries of the players. This was informed by batting coach Vikram Rathour on Thursday. Pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah is suffering from an abdominal strain and is a doubtful starter for the series decider. If he doesn't play, the visitors can bring in Shardul Thakur to join Mohammed Siraj and Navdeep Saini in the pace department. With KL Rahul returning home due to a wrist injury and Mayank Agarwal hit on the hand at the nets, India also face a dilemma as they look to bring in someone to replace Hanuma Vihari, who injured his hamstring during the drawn third Test and is unlikely to play as the No. 6 batsman. There are also concerns over Ravichandran Ashwin's fitness as he woke up with a back tweak on the final day of the Sydney Test and then suffered a hit on his ribs by a short delivery from P...

  Cricket Australia on Friday asserted that the third Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against India is not threatened by a fresh COVID-19 outbreak in Sydney even though the situation is being closely monitored. Australian cricket officials were put on alert after the number of cases in the northern beaches outbreak in Sydney reached 28 on Friday. The third Test between India and Australia at the SCG is scheduled to get underway on January 7. "There's been lots of discussion and meetings of our medical experts, but this is the reason why throughout the summer we've had our players in bubbles in the hub," CA's interim chief executive Nick Hockley told SEN Radio. Read More

  Australian cricket team has pushed India to the second spot in the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) points table after the International Cricket Council (ICC) on Thursday effected changes to the WTC rules. The changes in ICC WTC points system has be made as several bilateral series could not be played due to Covid-19 pandemic. Changes to the rules were made to determine the nine teams' standings on the points table. ICC World Test Championship new rules Although India (360 points) still has 64 more points than Australia (296) and more series wins, the Aussies have gone atop after the ICC Board approved that the matches played and the matches lost won't be treated as drawn and points would be split. Australia now has 0.822 percentage points (82.2 per cent), which propelled them to the No.1 spot, while India has 0.750 (75 per cent). Read More

Michael Hussey feels that Mahendra Singh Dhoni does not have "too many weaknesses" but even if he has, the Chennai Super Kings batting coach wouldn't share them with in-form Australia ahead of their World Cup clash on Sunday. Having crushed Afghanistan and put up an inspirational performance against a rampaging West Indies, Australia are expected to be more than a handful for India when the two teams square off at the Oval. Hussey has played alongside Dhoni at CSK and as coach, watched him from close quarters in the franchise. So, will Hussey share his insights on Dhoni with the Australian coaching team? "No chance. There aren't too many weaknesses there anyway," the former Australia batsman let out a chuckle as he spoke to PTI in an exclusive interview. However, Hussey is confident that Australia will have their plans in place for the former India captain. "All the teams do very thorough analysis on all the players so I am sure that t...