'Great stage for Fab 4 to quit'

Bangalore: The focus of the India-Australia series now squarely shifts to the impending decisions of India's great batsmen to call it a day. With Sourav Ganguly already making the first move, the pressure increases on the other senior pros as well. But Indian coach Gary Kirsten believes the Border-Gavaskar Trophy provides the perfect stage for the senior players to end their careers. In this exclusive interview with Neo Cricket and cricketnirvana.com's Editor Faisal Shariff, Kirsten comments on what the series holds for his experienced batting line-up

Excerpts:

India-Australia series is clearly the biggest clash of the year. Do you really reckon that it is the Ashes now?

One has to be very careful to say that because there is a lot of history in the Ashes as it has been a tremendous event for so long now. You always get big crowds watching the Ashes but certainly the India-Australia contest has really picked up, especially in the 2000s. India can boast of great wins against Australia, especially in 2001 when they came back from nowhere at Eden Gardens, following which there have been a pool of magnificent series. The last series in Australia was a tremendous one too despite all the happenings and controversies. They are two great Test playing nations, very competitive sides with lots of talented players. We can gear up for another fantastic series.

But if you were to pick two sides who you would want to watch in Test cricket today probably at TV or at stadium which would those teams be?

I think it's unfair to do that but certainly the India-Australia clashes are as good as it gets. There are going to be big crowds and it will be a fierce battle. You know that is going to have the best possible teams competing against each other.

Gary, you have won the ODI series in Sri Lanka, a historic win, but the Test series didn't really pan out the way you wanted. Do you reckon that it has any bearing going into such a big series against Australia at home?

Obviously there are some concerns in the team, especially our batting. We are going to have to work on those areas and prepare well. We know how well the Australians bat under pressure and are aware that they will be well prepared. They are a fit and strong side and would have chalked out some plans but there is no doubt that we are going to put in the preparations to make sure that we will be up to the mark.

Adam Gilchrist was their trump card for so many years, coming in at no 6-7, chasing down any total, setting up a huge target. He is gone now. Will they be the same threat?

I don't think you could ever underestimate any Australian team, regardless of where the cricket is being played. There is a lot of talent in Australian cricket but certainly experience counts a lot in Test match cricket and maybe the only area where they have started to slow down is that they don't have as many experienced cricketers in their team now. It would be completely up to us to exploit those weaknesses in whatever way possible. We know that we will come up against some determined Australians but I think the one string that we will have is a lot of experience in our team, with players who have played a lot of cricket against Australia. We understand the conditions and have to take advantage of it.

Steve Waugh termed this series as the final frontier when he came here as Australian captain in 2001, The 4 great batsmen in the Indian team, the Fab 4 as they are called, will probably be looking at this series as a final frontier to make sure that they win in their own backyard against the Australians. Does that add to the excitement to the India-Australia series, just the fact that this Fab 4 having lost to the Sri Lanka, will probably want to turn it around?

There is no doubt in that. There is lot of incentive for those players who are towards the end of their careers and I am sure many of them are thinking about a great way to end their career. It does not get better than finish your career by winning a Test series at home against the best team in the world. That is enough motivation for anyone and I am sure that the lucks of those very experienced players will be up for the battle.

Ricky Ponting has always been struggling to get runs in India. There will obviously be extra pressure on him because he is the captain. How do you see it panning out this time?

He will certainly come knowing that he has a point to prove and when anyone has a point to prove, especially great players, they invariably up their tempo a little bit and do everything they can, to try and prove to the people that they can play in any conditions. So he will be well prepared and will be up to the mark and again it will be up to us to look for ways in which we can get him out early. It is going to be an interesting battle and hopefully we will pull it off.

The Indian team has always been known for its batsmen, but today, in reality it can be proud and boast of a great bowling line up…

I think it's very exciting for Indian cricket. We have balance in the team, tremendous skills in all the departments and I think that's very important. We are beginning to realise now how a Test match, regardless of the conditions that you are playing in, can be won if we strike at certain times. We surely possess the ability to get early wickets and Ishant Sharma has done that brilliantly this year and hopefully he will be fit, strong and ready to go. Zaheer Khan is bowling nicely and there are couple of others underneath who also want to strike a claim for a place in the team. That is good news and it balances the team.

If you take away the controversy from India's last tour of Australia, the one talking point was the 23 balls that Ishant Sharma bowled to Ricky Ponting. Do you think the contest will sum up this series?

We don't know but he certainly is an exciting bowler and he has the potential to do that again. I wouldn't mind which bowler it is, its creating pressure for us and putting the Australians batsmen under pressure and there are number of bowlers capable of doing that on different wickets that we might be confronted with.

How important is Virender Sehwag at the top for India's Test success?

He is very important and is in a tremendous run of form at the moment. We are hoping that he continues but realise how this game works. You can't expect him to fire always but he is playing with incredible flair at the moment and is backing himself. Sehwag is a positive cricketer who thinks a lot about his game. He is certainly going to be putting his plans together in terms of the bowling he is going to be facing. When he gets going, we as a team gather tremendous momentum. Virender Sehwag is great for Indian cricket.

The other person I will talk to about is MS Dhoni. He is obviously on a high, there is nothing that Dhoni does is wrong these days. Did you miss him in the Test series in Sri Lanka?

He is a world class cricketer, of course we missed him, but we believe we have got cricketers that can fill the gaps and can play good cricket as well. But its great to have him in the team. Dhoni is an enthusiastic cricketer, very positive on the field and very street smart, he knows how to play his game out in the cricket field and he has tremendous leadership qualities as well, so certainly it is nice to have him out there and making the contributions we know he can.

Talking about passion, is there anything that you are going to tell Laxman and Harbhajan before you get into the series against Australia? They have had a dream run against Australia and they are going to be key players for you.

I think the less you talk to them, the better it is in many respects as they know what they are capable of doing. You do have individuals playing well against certain countries and the team will look to those three individuals because they are the ones that you are confident about, but to win a Test series against a team like Australia, you need to have big contributions from a whole lot of different players throughout the series so we won't be looking at only two players but we will be looking at plenty of players to contribute.