Omg yay, cricket!

Finally today we present to you... cricket! Yes folks, after more than a month, international cricket is back! The place to be is the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru as India and Australia face off in the first of the four rubbers for the Border Gavaskar Trophy. And of course, if you can't be in Bangalore (like me) and can tolerate yapping ex-players, you can watch live-coverage with all the uber-cool slow-mo replays and closeups (and annoying ads every few minutes, but you know, yin with the yang and such-like). Or you could just follow Cricinfo's awesome online ball-by-ball commentary -- almost as good as the real thing!

Ricky has won the toss (Dhoni and Kumble suck at winning the toss, except Dhoni's lucky star has taken steps to remedy that recently - very busy, that star of his) and has elected to bat first on a veritable batting beauty. India have to bat fourth, but what the hell. Cameron White makes his debut ahead of Jason Krejza, and one has to actually say that Ponting has done Krejza a favour - the way the Board President's XI tore apart Krejza in the practice match, the senior team's handling would've probably left him scarred for life. But then again, I remember White more as a batting all-rounder, so it's an unenviable choice that Ponting has made. Let's see if White can pull off a Clarke, though.

The final elevens for the Test:

Australia

Katich
Hayden
Ponting
Hussey
Clarke
Watson
Haddin
White
Lee
Johnson
Clark

India

Gambhir
Sehwag
Dravid
Tendulkar
Ganguly
Laxman
Dhoni
Kumble
H. Singh
Z.Khan
I.Sharma

Pretty much predictable line-ups otherwise. It's going to be a good match - hopefully India'll get rid of the bad habit of starting a series badly and hit the ground running this time!

Let the cricket begin!