Bad weather could dampen Lankan tour opener
 

Sa'adi Thawfeeq reporting from India

BANGALORE, Wednesday - Sri Lanka's tour opener against an Indian Board President's XI looked in danger of being interrupted by bad weather which had spilled over from Chennai where the third one-dayer between India and South Africa was washed out by rain. The weather here was horrible throughout the day with a steady drizzle under laden skies and no sign of the sun at all.

The weather has been like this for the past three days, but the locals here are quite certain that it would clear by the time the 3-day match gets under way on Saturday. Predicting the weather these days is a rather tricky business because nine times out of ten it is just the opposite of what had been forecast that takes place.

The Sri Lanka team led by Marvan Atapattu is expected to arrive here tonight via Chennai and this three-day game is their only warm-up before taking on India in a series of three Tests, the first of which starts at Chennai on December 2. Sri Lanka has yet to beat India in India and the series gives them the opportunity to put things right and overcome the 1-6 defeat in the seven one-dayers.

Andhra's enterprising middle-order batsman Venugopal Rao will lead the Indian Board President's XI which also includes former Indian wicket-keeper Parthiv Patel as his deputy. Rao played in five of the seven one-day matches against Sri Lanka recently.

The Indian cricket selectors who met under the chairmanship of Kiran More, the former Indian wicket-keeper named a squad of 12 players for the match.The squad has three openers in local boy Robin Uthappa, Delhi's Shikhar Dhawan and Maharashtra's Dheeraj Jadhav.

The selectors were due to pick the Indian Test team today having already made Rahul Dravid the new Indian Test captain succeeding Sourav Ganguly. Dravid's appointment ended Ganguly's five-year reign at the top during which period he emerged as the most successful Test captain produced by India with 21 wins from 49 Tests.

The Indian Board President's XI (from): Venugopal Rao (captain), Dheeraj Jadhav, Shilkhar Dhawan, Robin Uthappa, S. Sriram, Neeraj Patel, Parthiv Patel, Munaf Patel, Amit Mishra, Ranadeb Bose, Gagandeep Singh, Kulamani Parida.