Match : 1st test

Team: Australia, South Africa

Venue: Perth

Live Streaming online

Gambhir’s unbeaten 51 included eight hits to the fence and Delhi’s hopes to score another 268 runs for a memorable win would centre around the attacking left-hander.

This is a complete change from the current selection panel comprising Vengsarkar (West), Venkatapathy Raju (South), Ranjib Biswal (East), Sanjay Jagdale (Central) and Bhupinder Singh Sr (North).

The BCCI’s Working Committee, at its last sitting, had decided that no office bearer of the Board or any of its affiliated units can become a selector in future.

This decision, expected to be passed at the AGM, will rule out Vengsarkar, Raju and Biswal who are office bearers of their respective cricket associations, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Orissa.

Vengsarkar and Raju are Vice-President’s, while Biswal is the President of their respective units.

All of them were eligible to be appointed as paid selectors as they were still to complete four years of their tenure.

But the Working Committee decision barring office bearers from becoming selectors rules them out. sources:indiatimes.com

According to BCCI sources, the core members of BCCI, who met on Friday, decided to retain Pawar as the marketing committee chairman. Modi will continue to be vice-president of the world’s richest cricket board and also chairman of the Indian Premier League.

Incidentally, a top BCCI official had told TOI on Thursday evening that Modi was a unanimous choice for being the chairman of the marketing committee. What happened in the last 24 hours? One, Modi’s rebuttal of Ratnakar Shetty’s criticism of RCA for providing the Aussies with top-class facilities must have played on the minds of BCCI officials.

Two, his comments on former president Jagmohan Dalmiya, welcoming him to the AGM which starts in Mumbai on Saturday, must have added fuel to the fire.”You can’t say that Modi hasn’t been given the post because he went out of his way to help the Aussies or helped Dalmiya. Please don’t speculate and wait for the formal announcement,” a BCCI official suggested.

However, another senior official admitted that the RCA issue did make the board members, including Pawar, angry. “He had no business to go out of his way to make the Aussies feel at home. When the Indian team tours, they get just basic facilities to train. This came on top of the Chappell issue. When the Aussie coach had resigned amidst controversy, Modi should not have rehabilitated him and asked him to head the Jaipur academy. It (the removal) was waiting to happen,” he said.

Apart from Pawar, his trusted lieutenant and president-elect, Shashank Manohar, his new secretary N Srinivasan, treasurer M P Pandove, Vijay Mallya, Rajiv Shukla, Chirayu Amin are the other prominent members in the marketing committee.

As Cricket Australia is considering an IPL-like franchise system for the tournament. The revamped event is likely start in 2009-10, as Cricket Australia and India have agreed to clear their biggest superstars to play in Australia’s domestic Twenty20 competition.

Australia’s six-state Twenty20 competition is going ahead this season, but from the following year the tournament could look completely different, as Australia investigated options for how to structure the series.

The state teams could remain, but another possibility is to adapt the hugely successful IPL model, in which teams were owned privately and signed international players, in which India have confirmed their participation.

Cricket Australia’s spokesperson Peter Young told Times Now that they were looking at the franchise model system ‘very, very closely’.

“We are doing a lot of research into how we should structure Australia’s domestic Twenty20 competition into the future. At the moment we don’t have a firm proposal. We are very closely at the franchise model, but it might be another two to three summers before we get to where we need to be.”

“One of the possibilities is to invite overseas stars and it’s still very much at an early concept stage. Whatever we do in our domestic Twent20, it will be important for it to feed into the Champions league T20 Indian players in the Twenty20 league and we are studying India’s IPL Twenty20 model,” he added.

Meanwhile Lalit Modi, the IPL chairman and BCCI vice-president on Friday agreed to clear their biggest superstars to play in Australia’s domestic Twenty20 competition.

“Cricket Australia have asked us already if we would release our players for that and we said yes, they have been gracious enough to release their players for us, so we have no problem to send our players,” Modi said.

“IPL has basically been a feeder league to what would culminate to be a Champions League. Over the years and in the next few years, we would see similiar leagues all over the world. All these leagues…their one objective would be the world’s best. And nothing can beat actually going out and playing there and being crowned the Champions of Champions League,” he added.

In the meantime, the six Australian states will compete in this summer’s more familiar version of the KFC Twenty20, with extra incentive as the two top teams will qualify for next year’s Champions League.

Victoria and Western Australia made the cut this year and will face domestic teams from England, India, South Africa and Pakistan at the inaugural Champions League, which will be held in India this December.

Ponting is leading a side with only four players of his 14-member squad having played Test cricket in India. But he has the best record of all Australian captains. In 44 Tests he has lost only four Tests, importantly two of them have been against India. One of these was the only match he played on the previous Test tour four years ago, reports The Australian.

Ponting missed the first three matches on the 2004 tour through injury and Adam Gilchrist led the Australia side to cross what Steve Waugh said was the ‘Final Frontier’ by winning the first Test series in India for 35 years. Ponting led in the last Test only to lose narrowly on a dreadful pitch.

The other loss against India under Ponting came during the third Test last summer in Perth before Australia drew the final Test in Adelaide to seal a difficult 2-1 series victory.