Australia vs india 2011-12 Features

At 37, most athletes are entering the last leg of their sporting careers. Not Ricky Ponting. Apart from his grit and determination to excel, his aging body ought to be asking for a break. Question though is if his team can afford to relent to his body's needs.

It is impossible to be completely rational about sport. Romance and sentiment are part of the deal. To think about or relate to sport with detached and clinical logic is to strip it of its very soul.

Wickets or maidens, top order or tailenders, with new ball or old, Australian pacer Ben Hilfenhaus is a nightmare which just refuses to go away for the Indians in the ongoing Test series.

Umesh Yadav has been a stand-out performer for India in what has otherwise been a dismal series for MS Dhoni and his team Down Under. On Saturday, he claimed his first five-wicket haul in Tests.

Though most experts have written off India's chances of making a comeback in the series after crushing defeats in the Melbourne and Sydney Tests, it is not the first time Team India has been in this situation Down Under.

It's all over, as Bill Lawry would say. Sachin Tendulkar: 22 years of international cricket, five Test tours to Australia. Rahul Dravid: close to 16 years of international cricket, four tours to Australia. VVS Laxman: same as Dravid. They will never win a Test series in Australia. How broken the three must feel. Australia, the land that loved them and also broke ...

There were things typical and atypical about VVS Laxman's boundary in Nathan Lyon's first over. Across Laxman's career it has almost been his signature stroke, a wristy flick in front of square leg. But on this tour the boundary was something of a keynote event. It was Laxman's first of the series, in his fourth innings and off his 61st ball. The dam wall having ...

Domineering. There is no other word for it. Australia's innings and 68-run victory over India at the SCG was the most comprehensive mauling meted out to an opponent of note in more than two years, and the hammer blow in a series that had begun with the visitors considered favourites. How strange and distant that seems now. Michael Clarke's team are some distance ...

Rahul Dravid has just had his second-best year in Test cricket. It has been, most of all, about meeting his own high expectations.

As the Sydney Cricket Ground hosts its 100th Test, here is a quick look back at some of the most famous - and infamous - Tests at the venue.