I had written a couple of weeks earlier that Ajinkya Rahane might be India’s solution to the number six conundrum. Even since Saurav Ganguly retired thenumber six position has been a weak spot for the Indian batting unit. Yuvraj Singh has played well in bursts but he has been injured far too many times pre-empting him from making the spot his own. Suresh Raina started well in Sri Lanka but completely frittered away the advantage in the recent tour of England. Raina, an exceptional one day and T-20 player just did not look the part in Test match cricket. With Cheteshwar Pujara still injured and Rohit Sharma still trying to cement his place in the shorter versions of the game, the choice is betweenYuvraj, Kohli and Akinkya Rahane come India’s series down under in December.

From what we have seen of Ajinkya Rahane, he is surely doing his chances a lot of good by his recent exploits against England. Since his very first opportunity for the men in blue, Rahane has impressed one and all. Unfazed against the short delivery and trying to improvise every now and then, this young Mumbai lad has seriously staked a claim for a spot in the Indian Test line-up.

Rahane, who has made the Indian team on the back of hundreds of domestic runs, has the technique and the temperament and unlike Suresh Raina, the longer version of the game doesn’t appear to overawe him. It might well be that Rahane is tried out against the West Indies in November to give him a feel for battle before the crucial series against Australia a month later.

Most of India’s big guns will be fit for the tour of Australia. This will mean a settled opening pair in Sehwag and Gambhir with Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman to follow. With Raina, at six there is a definite weakness in the Test matches. Add to this Dhoni’s fragility against the new ball and you risk an early start to the tail. Also, Raina’s failure in the Test arena is bound to impact his performance in the shorter versions of the game, where, needless to say, he is lethal.

Rahane’s biggest strength is that he can bat long. He has done so on numerous occasions for Mumbai in the Ranji trophy in the last few seasons and once again demonstrated this ability of his in the Irani trophy match against Rajasthan. Even the three-figure mark did not impact upon his concentration. He continued unfazed and got to his 150 in relatively quick time. Even in Mohali he showed us his ability to concentrate for long periods. Holding the innings together, Rahane set up the series win with Dhoni adding the finishing touches with Jadeja in tow.

His ability to counter the short ball, which was in evidence against Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson in England and now against Finn and Dernbach in India (his dismissal to Bresnan in the second one dayer notwithstanding) gives him a head start for the number-six position. It is only natural that the Australians, led by Mitchell Johnson, will pepper the Indians with the short stuff, especially after the debacle in England and Rahane, more than Raina, is better suited to tackle this.

The only chance India has in Australia is to bat big and bat long. Even if Zaheer Khan does make a comeback in time for the Australia series, the bowling looks relatively fragile. Khan might turn out fit but will have had little or no match practice before going to Australia. While he is worth risking given his immense potential, the back-up in Pravin Kumar and Ishant Sharma in less ideal swing-friendly conditions will mean the Indians will continue to struggle to pick 20 wickets.

Finally,if anyone looks a natural number three in the absence of Rahul Dravid, it must be Ajinkya Rahane. He does exude a sense of calm in the middle and has the patience to leave balls outside the off stump, something Virat Kohli still needs to come to terms with. In Australia, you will need to leave balls as much as possible to tire the Australian bowlers out and Rahane appears a good bet. I’d be happy to put my money on this youngster.

One of the singular fairytales of the 2007 world cup was the man of the series award won by the Australian legend, Glenn Mcgrath. Then 37, Mcgrath retired soon after the competition was over bringing to an end a glorious international cricketing career. While his was a fairytale similar to that of Imran Khan’s in 1992, legends like Brian Lara or Sachin Tendulkar have not been able to make the world cup stage their own. The case of Sachin Tendulkar is most interesting. Highest scorer and man of the tournament in 2003 with 673 runs, he had to settle for the runner up prize. In 1996 too he was the highest scorer of the competition with 523 runs but could not save India from being ousted in the semi-finals. It was his 65 against the turning ball that was India’s only ray of hope at the Eden Gardens on that fateful day in March in 1996 in a game that eventually threatened to deprive Eden of its status as an international cricketing venue. Burning stands, broken galleries and a tearful Vinod Kambli are the enduring memories from that encounter.

93 international centuries, 47 in Tests and 46 in ODI’s, 25 more than second ranked Ricky Ponting’s combined tally, and instantly the debate about who’s the greatest ever is put to rest. Yet, he has never won the world cup. 2011, it is well known, is his last chance. Having scored almost 2000 runs in world cup cricket and having brought India perilously close to winning the silverware in 2003, Sachin, the patriot that he is, will want to taste ultimate glory at the refurbished Wankhede in front of his home crowd.

And what is of significance is that Sachin, in 2011, has the team to have a real crack at the silverware. A team with considerable batting and bowling depth and with the extra incentive of winning it for their legendary teammate, chances are India might witness a cardinal cricketing romance come true on 2 April 2011.

To push the fantasy a bit more: With Sachin on 97 international hundreds, it may well be that he gets his 100th hundred at the world cup. A world cup win to go with his 100th hundred, Indian fans can sacrifice their last dollar if this dream comes true.

Just like Sachin, Kallis, Ponting, Murali and Gayle, each of them legends of the game in their own right, will also be eyeing the silverware. While Ponting will be defending his title won in 2003 and 2007, he has never been under as much pressure as now. Having lost the Ashes and with calls all over asking for his sacking as captain, Ponting wants to win the cup more than ever before to sign out on a high.

Murali, who has already declared that world cup 2011 will be his last international engagement, will want to end a legendary career with one last flourish. The 1996 world cup in many ways saw the making of Sri Lankan cricket. The performance graph will turn full circle if they accomplish a podium finish in 2011.

And for Kallis, perhaps in the form of his life, this is his final chance to win a major competition. South Africa has for over a decade been the team to beat in the world cup and yet they have stumbled when it mattered the most. With perhaps the best fast bowling attack in the world and a number of batsmen in form, the pressure on Kallis too is less than it has been in the past. This coupled with the fact that he had a great IPL season three in 2010 should give him the extra confidence for the world cup.

Others like Afridi, Brett Lee, Gayle and Mahela are also playing their last tournament adding to the romance of world cup 2011. Despite cricket being a team game, it is well known that it is also the most individualistic of all team sports and without the legends mentioned above the story of the world cup will not be half as interesting. So much so that a India Australia match can well become a clash between Tendulkar and Lee or Harbhajan and Ponting. Such individual duels turn into elements of fantasy, resulting in the creation of the much needed hype surrounding the tournament.

The stage couldn’t have been more interesting. A controversial build up, an unprecedented 350 players going under the hammer, as much as 270 crores to be spent in a day and a half, the spectre of Lalit Modi to be exorcised and finally with two new entrants joining the fray the tournament getting bigger in scale and scope. The auction, more than anything, was a financial planner’s delight. How much do you spend on a certain player while making sure you still have fuel left in the tank to put a balanced team out in the park? If you don’t get option A, do you have a plan B? More often than not both plan A and plan B may not work. In such a scenario is there a back-up plan C? Have you kept the heat of April and May in mind when picking your players? It was a game of chess involving multiple players and the stakes were huge. A failed auction and a franchise will be ruing the mistake for three long years. And in a competition where instant success is the mantra three years can well mean curtains for the coach and the support staff or even the franchise itself.

Questions doing the rounds before the auction were as follows: Do you go for an explosive side like the Mumbai Indians or will you border on caution ala the Rajasthan Royals and minimise your spend? Do you go for brands to rake in the endorsements or do you go in for a specialised T-20 side? And finally how do you put a cap on a player’s capabilities especially with the world cup expected to tire out the best of performers?

Surely it was the mother of all gambles making it all the more exciting.

With the venue moving to Bangalore because of logistical reasons, it was surely a Test for the post Modi BCCI. For it was the first auction in February 2008 that had given’s Modi’s IPL a head start. And by all yardsticks it must be acknowledged that the BCCI has done well in Bangalore. They have used the very same men who constituted Modi’s army in 2008. Retaining the services of IMG and its boss Sundar Raman, the BCCI ensured that it had the experience to fall back on. And then it needed to get the basics right. Convert the auction into a mega television event, ensure that it was telecast live by the host broadcaster while the buzz was created by the news channels, get in the right mix of players, ensure the bigger names were all out there and brief the teams about exact procedure. All of this was done to near perfection. With the Indian team playing some fantastic cricket for over a year now and with the India South Africa series living up to the billing of a contest between the two best sides in the world, the BCCI’s work had become a tad easier. Cricket, gradually, was/is taking over from the scams that dominated the news headlines in the latter half of 2010. And with reasonable glamour out in Bangalore to satisfy the 100 or so news channel cameras, IPL 4 got off to a start that should give the BCCI confidence before the tournament finally begins on 9 April 2011.

In terms of preparations there was much focus on the uncapped players on the eve of the auction. Emphasis that has now resulted in street fights between franchise owners in the post auction scenario. This is because a bunch of reasonable uncapped players, with base price varying between 10 and 30 lakhs, could potentially allow a franchise the option to splurge at the auction. For a franchise which may have chalked out a plan to pick 14 uncapped players spending 3 crores or so, 33 crores remained available to buy 11-12 established players at the auction. This strategy, however, was steeped in risk with the BCCI pre-empting franchise owners from speaking to uncapped players before the auction. Accordingly, teams went about the auction the other way round. They picked up 12-14 players at an average and are now filling the gaps with talented uncapped players making them near or even more valuable than some of the auction picks. This explains five or more franchises sending requisition forms for a Ambati Rayadu or Manish Pandey, stars of IPL seasons three and two respectively.

Coming to the auction itself, most of the big spends went along expected lines. It was inevitable that the five Indian stars, Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, Gautam Gambhir, Yusuf Pathan and Rohit Sharma would command the highest bids at the auction. This is simply not because they are the best players available but also because an Indian name is still preferred to lead an outfit and they are essential names to have on the roster to enlist sponsors for the next three seasons. More than foreigners, Indian names remain the tried and tested option as far as the market is concerned and this resulted in huge sums being spent on these stars. In fact, Rajasthan Royals, champions of season one, found it impossible to find a lead sponsor in year two because they lacked an Indian face. Shane Warne and Shane Watson weren’t enough for the marketers. This explains why even a Umesh Yadav goes for 700000 USD while Wayne Parnell was sold for a paltry 160,000 USD. Again, reason why Saurav Tiwari was bought for 1.6 million USD while Cameron White and Kevin Peterson fell way short of the million mark.

Finally, it must be acknowledged that in the post auction scenario the BCCI can hardly breathe easy. This is because of the peculiarities in the rulings of the IPL. While Saurav Tiwari and Ambati Rayadu were both stars of IPL season 3 and while Tiwari has earned a 1.6 million dollar contract, Rayadu, because he is uncapped stands to earn only 30 lakh rupees. Such discrepancies are sure to encourage corruption and underhand deals, negotiations the BCCI and the IPL governing council will find impossible to control. But when was the IPL about fair play and ethics in the first place!

What is cricket without ritual? From the toss where the two captains dress up wearing team blazers to most batsmen looking up to the sky as they walk in to bat to a 40 minute lunch break and a 20 minute tea break and a drinks break every hour it is a game that is ritual laden at every step. And one of the games’ most talked about rituals in recent times is the boxing-day Test match. Though ‘goodwill day’ in South Africa, the 26th December Test, in common man parlance is now the ‘boxing day’ Test all over the world. Traditional breakfasts full of cricket talk in Australia adds to the aura of the boxing-day Test. Packed crowds at the MCG, making it to the stadium fairly early in the morning screaming down the throat of the visiting team from ball one is perhaps the sternest test that any cricketer can dream of. If the entire MCG is an amphitheatre of pressure, bay 13 is certainly the inner core where the hostility reaches its crescendo. Inebriated supporters, who have by lunch finished jugs of alcohol, will spare no England player from dawn to dusk. While its ‘wanker’ for the Indians, its ‘pommie weaklings’ for the English. To be able to give it back to them by performing against a charged up Australian attack is the true test of a cricketer’s mettle, his ultimate examination in adversity.

The atmosphere in and around the MCG and the media hype adds to the aura of the boxing-day Test. Tickets are sold out months in advance, special gatherings planned, exhibitions organized and special pull outs distributed with the local papers. Even if a player is decidedly against telling himself that he is on the verge of doing something special, he is reminded at every step that he is about to play the ‘boxing day’s test at the MCG, a test that holds special place in the world cricket pantheon. The Test is everywhere, from the multiple merchandise counters set up in federation square to the hoardings all over Melbourne, there is no escaping the fact that cricket rules the last few days of the year. It is, understandably, the advertiser’s delight. A packed MCG is a rare sight and any advertiser worth his money knows that the best way to reach out to a cricket fan is to be visible on boxing-day at the MCG.

If cricket fans in India spend the first half of their boxing day watching the Ashes, the second half will surely be spent with an eye on Durban. One of the most important Test matches featuring Dhoni and his men, there is much more than a deficit the Indians need to cope with on boxing-day. Their pride, hard earned over the last two years is at stake, and more than the determination to wipe out the deficit it is their ability to fight that is of paramount importance at Kingsmead in Durban. Individual reputations are also on the line. Suresh Raina, if picked, needs to prove to himself more than anyone that his demons against the short ball, first exposed by the English at Lords during the 2009 T-20 world cup, isn’t continuing to haunt him anymore. Cheteshwar Pujara, on the other hand, needs to show us that he belongs to the big stage and that we can rest easy knowing he is a worthy successor to Rahul Dravid. Dravid, having just scored 12000, will surely want to take centerstage and demonstrate that his technique against quality pace bowling is still not a thing of the past. Finally, India’s bowling, much talked about and criticised in the lead up, has all to gain and little to lose.

It is truly a riveting boxing-day in prospect, a day that will surely add some teeth and muscle to cricket’s traditional and most loved format. It is a day when ritual, sentiment and nostalgia will mesh together in producing a heady cocktail that fans can hardly ignore. It is a day that cricket, the game, needs and cherishes, a day when you feel proud that you are a cricket fan.