Ganguly, Buchanan in war of words

NAIROBI, OCTOBER 5: The India-Australia match is two days away, but the war of words has already begun. Aussie coach John Buchanan says he...

NAIROBI, OCTOBER 5: The India-Australia match is two days away, but the war of words has already begun. Aussie coach John Buchanan says he knows the Indians "inside out" The Indian skipper Saurav Ganguly on the other hand feels "they haven’t been playing so well recently. They lost twice to South Africa so they are not invincible."

The Indians have brought video-tapes of the Indoor Australia-South Africa series with them.

"We have shown them to the boys and will analyse our rivals accordingly. We will play according to our strengths and their weaknesses," Indian coach Anshuman Gaekwad, supervising his team go through training session at the Aga Khan club here, said. "We had an off-day yesterday, so the boys are fresh and raring to go."

Buchanan talks about the age-old Indian weakness of playing fast bowlers. "We know they can’t handle anything that comes above the rib cages. They struggle on hard pitches, like the way they did in Australia and our pacers, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee are almost ready," he felt.

Ganguly counters this. "This is not true. Moreover, this is a one-day game and a bouncer is penalised." Ask him whether he has chalked out a strategy for his batsmen? "They are international players, they know what to do".

Both the Indian coach and skipper said they were open to anything at this stage. When asked whether Sunil Joshi, who bowled well here last year, will make it to the playing eleven, Gaekwad said: "Anything ispossible".

As for Robin Singh, who wasn’t bowled at all in the game against Kenya, Gaekwad said: "Even Ganguly didn’t bowl. Robin is one of our main players and when we require him to bowl, he certainly will."

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Both the Indians and the Aussies are slated to have a training session on Saturday morning.