October 30, 2007	Tuesday	Shawwal 17, 1428

MUMBAI, Oct 29: Former players Erapalli Prasanna and Ajit Wadekar backed India on Monday to do well in the forthcoming home series against Pakistan starting from November 5.

”India should be able to do well against Pakistan in the home series as they have an all-round strength and our senior players have enough experience to handle pressure situations while our youngsters are more talented than the ones in the Pakistan team,” legendary off-spinner Prasanna said in an interview on Monday.

”Pakistan depends heavily on Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan while the rest of their top order looks very inexperienced and the youngsters are not as consistent as they should be,” added Prasanna. “Though Shahid Afridi is a dangerous batsman, he is very unreliable and seems to be concentrating on his leg-spin more nowadays than on his batting,” he observed.

”Even against South Africa, on their home soil, Pakistan’s batting was exposed despite the hosts managing to win a couple of low scoring matches. Their youngsters like Salman Butt, Imran Nazir and Yasir Hameed have been around for some time but have not made a lasting impression so far while Kamran Akmal has been struggling to find form,” Prasanna pointed out.

Despite Pakistan having an impressive line-up of new ball bowlers, Prasanna felt that controversial speedster Shoaib Akhtar was not as fearsome as he used to be and finding a winning combination would be tough task for the visitors. “As far as their bowling is concerned, I sincerely think Shoaib is not as deadly as he used to be even though the other new ball bowlers like Umar Gul, Asif and the newcomer Sohail Tanvir are bowling really well. However, the Pakistanis lack variety as they don’t have a specialist spinner in their ODI team,” he added.

“So compared to Pakistan’s bowling department, I think the Indians have variety with a good mix of left and right arm seamers and a left arm spinner in Murali Kartik and off-spinner Harbhajan Singh,” he added.

Former skipper and coach, Ajit Wadekar, who agreed with Prasanna on most of the points, said India may miss a solid batsman in the middle with the absence of their former captain Rahul Dravid, who as been dropped for the first two matches of the ODI series.

”India will surely miss Dravid in the middle. Even though we have very good stroke makers among our youngsters, Dravid would have added solidity in the middle and could have held one end up so that the others could go after the bowling from the other end,” Wadekar observed.

”However, apart form that weakness, I think India should be able to do well in both the One-Day and Test series as they have better all-round team and will be playing in front of the home crowd,” Wadekar added.—Agencies