Visiting Australians get into match-mode from Saturday

Jaipur: Australia begin their competitive cricket in their four-Tests tour of India with a two-day practice game against Rajasthan Cricket Association's Centre of Excellence team at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium here on Saturday.

Since landing in India on Monday, the World Champions have been camping here to acclimatise with Indian conditions with the RCA generously opening doors of its state-of-the-art Future Cricket Academy, which has 24 different outdoor pitches of every kind, besides five artificial pitches.

After four days of practice, Ricky Ponting and his boys will gear up to competition mode against a team led by former India One-Day player Gagan Khoda.

Another former India ODI player Venugopal Rao was to captain the RCA side, but he will miss Saturday's match as he is now playing for MRF Pace Academy in the JP Atray tournament in Chandigarh.

Most of the local team players are from Rajasthan's Ranji Trophy squad and it also has pacer Pankaj Singh who made it to the Indian squad in the controversial Test tour of India Down Under early this year but did not play any match there.

The practice game will give the visitors a hang of the match conditions after four days of practice, before shifting base to Hyderabad where they will play a four-day match from October 2.

The match will also give chances to visiting team captain Ricky Ponting and key opener Matthew Hayden to spend time in the middle in Indian conditions following injury lay-offs.

Ponting, who has a dismal record in India scoring 172 from 14 innings, would want to spend time in the middle as long as possible with nothing at stake.

It will also be a chance for rookies like pacers Douglas Bollinger and Peter Siddle, and spinner Jason Krezja to have some experience of match conditions in India. Another rookie spinner Bryce McGain though is likely to sit out on Saturday as he is recovering from a shoulder problem he sustained during Australia A's match against India A.

RCA Chief Curator Taposh Chatterjee said Saturday's pitch at Sawai Mansingh Stadium will be a conventional Indian flat pitch with lots of runs in it.

RCA team: Gagan Khoda (Captain), Gajendra Singh, Sumit Mathur, Robin Bist, Nikhil Doru, Shailender Gehlot, Rohit Jhalani (wk), Ashok Menaria, Mohan Singh, Pankaj Singh, Vineet Saxena, Shubhanshu Vijay.