It’s raining again, nowhere to hide

The Trent Bridge ground, meanwhile, has been shut for all, except the groundsmen. With the covers almost permanently on, there’s a massive effort underway to keep the field protected from any kind of water-logging.

Obviously, both captains — Michael Vaughan and Rahul Dravid — haven’t had a decent look at the pitch yet. And, going by the unforgiving weather, it doesn’t look like they will until the morning of the match.

Not that Dravid and Vaughan are losing much sleep over this. “The pitch has been protected, and it does have its share of bounce here. There won’t be much of a difference,” says Vaughan. Dravid —of course, the Indian captain has less of a choice here — agrees.

Now, with talk on the pitch and conditions settled, the two sides — with not much practice to look back on — are expected to enter the game with an unchanged eleven. And for India, it would mean that Yuvraj Singh would sit out again.

Again, as at Lord’s, the team that wins the toss is expected to bat first. With batsmen finding the initial 10-20 overs easier than the rest — the English Duke ball assists swing only once it loses a bit of shine — the pace bowlers are bound to start smiling later on, as in the first Test.

All of this now boils down to how India’s batting will match up to England’s slippery medium-pace. In the first Test, a very poor display by the top order forced India to pack up after a mere 201 runs in the first innings. And if it was not for Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s courageous batting in the second stint, the Indians have had nothing to look back on and smile about.

To push that point in further, the so-called big four — Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly — collectively scored a mere 87 runs in the first innings and 104 in the second.

If India need to put up a decent total on board, going by Dravid’s admission that the team batting first will need to score big, the four will have to come up with an effort that at least matches their reputation.

Dravid, meanwhile, is taking positives from the way he and the other senior batsmen had scored on the last tour here. In fact, Dravid, then Ganguly’s deputy, had come up with his first century on that tour at Trent Bridge, to kick-start an awesome run.

Indeed, if the team can do what they did the last time, with Dravid finding his lost touch, India can keep looking ahead.