India have left themselves a mountain to climb to win this series; down 0-2 and with four games to play, they will have to raise their game significantly, knowing Australia need only a half-chance to shut out the opposition in the fourth one-day international at the Sector 16 Stadium in Chandigarh.India have, however, responded well to such extreme pressure in the recent past. Trailing 3-1 in the NatWest Series in England, they were out for the count but managed to stretch the series till the final game at Lord’s. At the World Twenty20, India were faced with three must-win games against Pakistan, England and South Africa and won all three to make the semi-finals – and the two knockout games as well.The trend in the series has been for Australia to bat first and score 300, putting the Indian batsmen under immense pressure against an incisive new-ball attack. India’s openers haven’t coped well – 1, 11 and 10 in three innings – and the lack of partnerships at the top has crippled their run-chases.Monday may just be different because, for the first time in this series, India have the option of opening with Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly, who has recovered fully from his hamstring strain. Both of them went in first during the net sessions and had lengthy stints.There was confusion in Hyderabad over why Ganguly was left out: was it because he didn’t fit into the team combination, as the BCCI secretary, Niranjan Shah, said, or that he hadn’t recovered enough from his injury? The decision to play him in Chandigarh might be made easier with news that Gautam Gambhir strained his groin during a net session and hobbled back to the dressing room. He was sent for an MRI and will be assessed by John Gloster, the physio.

The failures of the top order have left the rest with too much to do and Robin Uthappa said the batsmen had to “take responsibility” for they had “let the team down”. Uthappa and Mahendra Singh Dhoni played cameos at Kochi and Yuvraj Singh scored a century in Hyderabad, but to beat Australia they must fire at the same time.Another worry is Rahul Dravid’s form – 31 at Kochi and 0 at Hyderabad – given his vital steadying role at No. 5, which allows Yuvraj and Dhoni to bat aggressively. Dravid’s last substantial contributions came in England where he scored 92 at Bristol and 56 at Edgbaston. Since then he has struggled and, not coincidentally, India slipped to defeat in England and started the series against Australia poorly.Equally under the scanner will be India’s bowlers, who have conceded 307, 306 and 290 in the matches so far. India played five bowlers at Bangalore and Kochi and four at Hyderabad and Uthappa said they were likely to play five bowlers again. That means Murali Kartik, the left-arm spinner who replaced Ramesh Powar in the squad, forming a two-pronged spin attack with Harbhajan Singh. His inclusion could be at the expense of Rohit Sharma in the middle order.Harbhajan bowled an economical spell in Hyderabad – 0 for 38 – but Andrew Symonds and Michael Clarke were able to see him off because there wasn’t enough pressure from the other end. Kartik’s left-arm spin, in tandem with Harbhajan’s offspin, could build pressure during the middle overs where Australia have dictated the pace and built the platform for their assault in the death overs.

They’ll have their task cut out though, for Australia’s batsmen have been in such form that Ponting virtually ruled out a change to their batting line-up. Brad Hodge hasn’t contributed much in the series – 0, 3, 3 – while Brad Haddin was dropped in Hyderabad after scoring consecutive half-centuries. Ponting, however, said that they would stick with Hodge.”Our batting’s pretty settled at the moment,” Ponting said. “We had a tough decision to make, leaving Haddin out in the first place and leave Hodge in the side. But Hodge has a record that has stood up well over a two-year period. He has trained really well today so if he gets an opportunity tomorrow I think he’ll get runs.”One change Australia are likely to make is in their bowling department. Nathan Bracken, the left-arm medium-pacer, didn’t play at Hyderabad but Ponting indicated he had a strong chance of making the XI.”Bracken is one of the top ranked one-day bowlers in the world. If the rest of the guys pull up okay, we’ll have to make a tough decision and leave one of the guys who have been playing out and bring Bracken back in.” Bracken’s ability to swing the ball, his precision and clever changes of pace will add an extra dimension to the Australian attack and make life harder for an Indian batting line-up that is struggling to put in a collective performance.Monday’s game is the first ODI being played at the picturesque Sector 16 Stadium in nearly 15 years and Ponting felt the pitch was dry and would get drier and slower as the day progressed. He did not hesitate in saying that he would bat first if he won the toss. If that is the case, the first half of this match could go the way of the previous three games with Australia scoring 300. Whether the Indian batsmen pull together could determine how the match and the series is decided.Teams
India (likely) 1 Sachin Tendulkar, 2 Sourav Ganguly, 3 Robin Uthappa, 4 Yuvraj Singh, 5 Rahul Dravid, 6 Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt & wk), 7 Irfan Pathan, 8 Murali Kartik, 9 Harbhajan Singh, 10 Zaheer Khan, 11 Sreesanth.Australia (likely) 1 Adam Gilchrist (wk), 2 Matthew Hayden, 3 Ricky Ponting (capt), 4 Michael Clarke, 5 Andrew Symonds, 6 Brad Hodge, 7 Brad Hogg, 8 Brett Lee, 9 Mitchell Johnson, 10 Nathan Bracken, 11 Stuart Clark.

Efforts to resuscitate Bob Woolmer, after he was found unconscious in his hotel room, were hindered by the position of his body, said the first doctor to attend to him, at a coroner’s inquest heard on Friday.Woolmer, the former Pakistan coach, was found unconscious in his room at the Pegasus Hotel a day after Pakistan’s shock defeat to Ireland in the World Cup. Dr Asher Cooper arrived a few minutes after Novelette Robinson, the team’s registered nurse, but could carry out resuscitation measures only after Woolmer was moved out of the bathroom.”When I went to the room, Woolmer’s head was under the toilet bowl and I could not do resuscitating exercises,” Cooper told Patrick Murphy, the inquest’s coroner and an 11-member jury. “I was only able to take pictures with my cellular phone camera, which I gave to the police.” Woolmer was moved to the hall with the help of the police after which he was administered CPR and chest compression.The measures were continued until the arrival of the ambulance, even though Woolmer was without a pulse and had stopped breathing. Cooper said there were no signs of life before Woolmer was taken to the University of West Indies hospital, where he was declared dead.Dr Simone French, who attended to Woolmer on his arrival at the hospital, said that further efforts were made to revive him before he was declared dead. “After the body was taken to the hospital we put him on the cardio machine and there was no response.”Dennis Forbes, a detective constable, also testified by displaying pictures he had taken, which showed Woolmer lying on a stretcher at the hospital. Woolmer’s face was blood-stained, with a purplish discolouration to his left side. The pictures also showed a red mark on his left hip.The inquest, which started on Tuesday, is being held at the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston.

KC Ibrahim, who played four Tests for India against West Indies in 1948-49, has died at his home in Karachi. He was 88 and at the time of his death was India’s oldest living Test player.He made his Test debut in the first match of the 1948-49 series at home to West Indies, his sheer weight of runs the previous summer making him an automatic pick. Opening with Vinoo Mankad, he scored 85 and 44, but in his next six innings he made only 40 runs and he had retired by the time England toured in 1951-52.Ibrahim’s Mumbai team-mate, Madhav Mantri, said he was “a solid player and one who believed in staying at the wicket for as long as possible.” He captained the Mumbai side that won the Ranji Trophy in 1947-48 and Mantri described him as “a fine captain, someone who believed in backing his players.”A top-order batsman who sometimes opened, Ibrahim made his first-class debut in 1938-39 and from 1941-42 onwards scored heavily in domestic cricket. He began that season with an unbeaten 230 and ended with 117 in Bombay’s innings win in the Ranji Trophy final.He reached his peak in 1947-48 when he scored 1171 runs at 167.29, including four hundreds, a record that won him the Indian Cricketer of the Year award for the season. He started the season with scores of 218*, 36*, 234*, 77* and 144, a total of 709 runs without being dismissed. In the last three innings of the previous season his scores had been 2, 2 and 4. He moved to Karachi in 1950 and that marked the end of his first-class career.He was in poor health for the last few years of his life. During India’s 2006 tour to Pakistan, a couple of journalists went to visit him. One of them, Jasvinder Sidhu, from the Hindi daily , remembers: “He didn’t want us to photograph him. He said, ‘I don’t want my friends in Bombay and Delhi to see my current state. Tell them I’m fine.'”

ScorecardSri Lanka Under-19 pulled off a convincing six-wicket win over Bangladesh Under-19 in the last match of the series after its opening bowlers shared nine of the ten wickets to restrict the hosts to a modest 123.Opting to bat Bangladesh lost four wickets in the first nine overs of the match as Denuwan Fernando and Chathura Peiris caused plenty of problems. Bangladesh never really recovered from that dismal start and only brief fightbacks, with three batsmen reaching the 20-run mark, enabled them to cross 100. Ashraful Aziz, batting at No. 8, top scored for Bangladesh with a patient 28 as his side was all out in the 41st over.Fernando finished with 5 for 28 while Peiris picked up four wickets. Lokuge Chandimal, Sri Lanka’s wicketkeeper, shone behind the stumps by picking up four catches.Sri Lanka never really faltered in a reply and a 68-run opening partnership between Chandimal (28) and Dilshan Munaweera (34). Although both batsmen fell in quick succession, followed by two more wickets towards the end, the target was too small for Bangladesh bowlers to pose serious problems as Sri Lanka completed a consolation win after having already lost the series.

Matthew Hayden overcame a nagging thigh injury to move level with Don Bradman on Australia’s list of century makers with 29. Hayden’s 123 helped Australia earn a lead of 213 entering the final day and he is confident they already have enough to defeat India and secure a world-record equalling 16th victory.”We’ve given ourselves the best chance of winning,” he said. “We can make up time, we’re in there with a shot, which is great.” Hayden predicted Australia would increase the lead to about 260 before declaring but believed “we’ve got too many runs now”.Hayden will wait to see how bad his leg problem is in the morning before deciding how to prepare for the third Test in Perth on January 16. “I’m pretty sore and I’ll just have to see how I pull up,” he said. “It’s the first time I’ve ever used a runner in a Test. It was ironic that Ricky Ponting, the captain, was running for me, I got a bit of a giggle out of that.”Ponting was called after falling to Harbhajan Singh for 1 and he was offering plenty of advice to Hayden while he batted. “I’m not sure who was doing the most talking, the captain or Michael Hussey,” he said. “But I’d be an idiot not to listen.”Hayden unveiled the reverse-sweep for the first time in Tests as a way of trying to escape India’s restrictive fields and had mixed results. He hit a four with the shot to bring up his half-century but fell when he tried another. Despite getting solid contact, he found Wasim Jaffer behind point to end his 196-ball innings, which included 12 fours.Only Ricky Ponting (33) and Steve Waugh (32) have more hundreds for Australia than Hayden, who also passed Mark Waugh’s career collection of 8029 during the display to become the fourth highest run-scorer in the country’s history. “The Don was an incredible personality in the game and he didn’t play anywhere near as much as we do,” Hayden said. “But it was significant when I passed his runs and it was significant when I passed his highest score. I very humbly accept these privileges and know how privileged I am to touch Bradman.”

The PCB has announced that the final-round of Quaid-e-Azam Trophy matches that were suspended following the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, in Rawalpindi on Thursday, will be rescheduled.The matches will have a major bearing on the final positions and the PCB wants to be fair to all sides.”Due to the unavoidable circumstances in the country the last round of Quaid-e-Azam Trophy matches which were either not completed or not started, will be replayed,” the PCB said. “The revised schedule and venues will be announced shortly after making all the logistic arrangements at concerned venues.”

Outspoken former South Africa coach Ray Jennings believes there are better candidates to captain the national side than Graeme Smith.Jennings has no issue with Smith the batsman, who recently posted a new world Test opening partnership with Neil McKenzie, but does have reservations when it comes to him leading the side. “Graeme Smith is a superb cricketer. He has presence and mental toughness,” he told The Wisden Cricketer. “From a captaincy point of view I believe there are one or two other guys who are able to lead the team better than he does.”When pressed to name his preferred candidates, Jennings replied: “Names aren’t really important to me. I believe there are better guys to do the job but that’s my opinion. As a batsman there’s no doubt I’ll have Graeme in my side. He’s a solid cricketer and a fighter.”When asked to comment on the recent high profile fall out between senior administrators about racial quotas, Jennings said: “South African cricket has to understand that they don’t need to put issues like this in the media. They could have had the fight behind closed doors and iron it out there. It has put me and a lot of cricketers in an awkward position.”I’m sad that coloured players in the team could have a stigma attached, where they feel they are underprivileged when that’s not the case. It’s not about having a 50-50 or 60-40 split between white and coloured players. In our country the sides are picked on their cricketing ability because the players of colour are good enough to play.”Jennings, who served a six-month stint as national coach, also said he would take up the post if it came around again, but only under his own terms. “I would definitely take it up again but there would be a few conditions. I would look at the combination of the side: how it gets picked. I would also look at my management staff and how I put that together.”In a terse media release, Cricket South Africa said Jennings claimed to have been “misquoted” in the article.