Quit monkeying around, PennyPacker. Maybe Crimson is referring to Women's Cricket.

tootchipper and MasterG, Australia do not have Murali and Mendis. Lee is just making a comeback after going through some personal setback, Symonds and Hayden may not be available. Therefore I think India have an advantage.

And Tuesday puts her nose in front in the race for the prat award.. keep going Tuesday, you might just win it! Oh, and Pom, we agree once more ;p I'm mighty proud of my team, they lived up to the (high) standards I had and I'm very happy. I'm going to enjoy Ind-Aus, Aus-SA and Ind-Eng, too. My predictions (hold on to your seats, I'm always right!) : Aus will struggle in India with Casson as their spinner, and if Symonds and Hayden don't play they will have even more problems. Johnson will be rather ineffective. The dangermen for the Aussies will be Clark, Clarke and Hussey. I wonder if Ponting's trouble against Singh will continue. On a flat track, it will be a draw. On a dust bowl India will win. On a (more or less) green top, Aus have the advantage even though India's quicks are in good form. Bangalore is flat, Mohali is a turner traditionally, and Delhi and Nagpur are great pitches which offer assistance to seamers then spinners. Therefore, to my mind, India have the advantage going into the series, and Aus will have to work long and hard to get more than a drawn series out of it.

Ed, I expect a drawn series. Australia will have taken note of India's celebrations after winning the ODI series in Oz, and will be looking to dish out some 2007 Ashes-style vengeance.But the absence of Symonds and lack of a proven spinner could be their downfall. India are a different team when Dhoni plays, but he has yet to dominate tests in the way he does ODI cricket, The cancellation of the Champions Trophy will also have given the Indian players a much needed break beforehand. But, after their limp capitulation against Sri Lanka I don't see them having enough to beat Australia.

Yes I would agree. Time to bring in the youngsters. Ganguly, Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman (in that order) have to be phased out.

Enigma, I don't see how India can be favorites for this series. SL just cleaned them up, last time they played SA in India they barely scraped a draw. The only way they will be favorites is if all the tests and ODI's are played in Kanpur! Also, India will probably not even attempt to compete in the Tests, seeing that their soon to be crowned test captain believes ODI's are more important.

Personally, I don't find any other men attractive Crimson, they are all ugly to me. But more power to you for being prepared to come out and let us know that you, on the other hand, do find some cricketers more good looking than others... :-)

Ed, India has the advantage in the upcoming India-Australia series primarily because the Aussies will be weakened by the absence of Symonds and Hayden. Aussies are, most likely, going to lose a test series for the first time since in 2005.

Most Ugly eleven: a few names yet more bowlers than anything else: Shaun Pollock ; Andrew Flintoff ; Muralitharan (cp) ; Malinga ; Merv Hughes ; Derick Crookes , Rudi Bryson , Nantie Hayward , Ponting , Symonds. Perhaps you guys should add players from you respective countries, that way we can decide who are in the combined 11.

Monkey semantics and Weedgate, it's all a bit of unpleasant deja vu and I did think twice before posting my own contribution. I don't think the events of Jan/Feb need to be endlessly raked over but recent developments show that they still resonate in all sorts of ways and the issues that surfaced are still relevant. But one of the tragedies of that tour is that the shouting matches tended to obscure the terrific cricket that was played. I sure look forward to the upcoming series and I'm hoping it's tough and absorbing but not so sour this time. I'm optimistic.

Enigma, maybe you should accept that your glorious team were at least partially to blame after their extremely cynical play in that test, which included excessive appealing, ball-tampering, open dissent and disrespect to the umpires. Mike Denness simply did his job, sorry.

Pom well said. You are right. We did win the series and for me that was the main purpose of the tour. Mission succesful in my mind. The ODI stuff is for practice really. Bring on Bangladesh and Kenya and then the mighty Australia. Its nice to see the Aussies have a tough tour of India before us. Fatigue might benifit us when we meet them.

I hate it when professional sports people say things like Too Much Cricket or too much rugby or whatever! I mean imagine a book keeper saying its just too much figures! In fact it absolutely ticks me off!! They are playing sport for a living and making more money than I will ever make and they complain about too much cricket!!! AHHH! Then get a real job!

Manalive, if there was an Most Ugly XI ever chosen Derick Crookes would be the captain!

Saman...I agree mate with the England report cards - actually quite funny the way some reports of lavishing praise on Broad despite his awful performances in the tests. Lest we not forget we lost the test series. SA should be welcomed home as heroes, but probably will not because of four bad days of cricket in ODI's...they had more than four bad days of cricket in the test series (in fact three bad days in the first test alone) and yet still came out victors - this is why test cricket will always be the greatest format of the worlds greatest sport as it is the greatest test of aligning skill and mental strength...now you guys are home, once again (and for the last time) I say well done you should be proud of your team...now let hostilities re-commence.

Emerlander, you can't call for an end to the conversation, but then give yourself the last word. If the cameras didn't capture the obnoxious little weed slapping his teamate, he would have denied that happened too. He's a liar and not man enough to put his hand up. You can harp on all you like about 'proof' that he called Roy a monkey, but we all know he did, and I suspect that even most Indians know he did too - not that they'll concede it though. Can you prove that Andrew Symonds is a liar?

Emerlander other Aussies in Symond's propinquity claimed to hear it but of course the Indian guys are then distorting it trying to make out it was some other vague word. This will never be resolved so let's move on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh my God! I think I started this Monkeygate!! Damn it. I didnt expect anyone would take that one comment this seriously. Anyway, it's better we end this conversation me thinks. I want to make a few comments though. Calling someone monkey 'is' racist. It's not recist when one Indian calls another Indian monkey. It's usually done for fun (I've been called monkey playfully). But it certainly is racist when an Indian calls someone of african origin monkey. The point I'm making is that no one ever proved Harhbajan called Symonds monkey. Yes, Bajji is a crazy moron but that doesnt necessarily mean he said it. Someone has to prove that he actually said it.

Anyone else think it's a bit rich that Captain Lard is complaining about too much cricket and attributing his injury to the rather hectic schedule yet he chose IPL ahead of an important series against the poms. Is he cricket's biggest mercenary? It's time he made a choice - IPL or country? Cricketers complaining about the saturation of the cricket calendar are no longer taken seriously if they race off to India at the sight and sound of the T20 juggernaut.

I can't believe we are discussing Bhajjigate after all this time ! Must be a paucity of quality cricket. Geez, you guys start to show withdrawal symptoms fairly quickly, I must say.

Penny, I can't believe I have to repeat this so often. The incident that you refer to WAS done knowingly and is indefensible. The connotation by then had been well known due to the wall-to-wall coverage. But at the time that it first surfaced, it was relatively unknown among Indians. Shucks, I did not know it myself. You guys pretend that you are privy to what was captured on the stump mic. If indeed he did say monkey with the full knowledge that it was racist, it is abhorrent. But, he did not, we can only judge him on the basis of our prejudices.

ArrogantOz says: ...that is, whenever they can spare time from beating up Indian taxi-drivers.
Your heart must be swelling with pride, mate. Must be a deed after your own heart going by the way you tout it. But, Aussies are always welcome in India.

Symonds is not blameless when it comes to provocative behaviour but I've got no doubt that HS tried to rattle him by racially abuse him. I or other Aussies don't expect his lame explanations. You have to be sensitive to what upsets people from other cultures. And is it any great coincidence that the one person he was prepared to call a monkey looked like Symonds? Why none of the other Australians? And why are we returning to Monkeygate? Wasn't this topic done to death during last year's test series?

MasterG, I remember SA 2001. But you will accept that Mike Denness precipitated the crisis by his extremely biased rulings.

listen pakistan deserve to play cricket they are one of the best teams in the world