Spotlight on Gavaskar, Jaffer

hyderabad: big time cricket returns to hyderabad after a two-year hiatus with board president's xi taking on the visiting english side in a three-day tour match at the lal bahadur stadium, here from thursday. with the indian team not doing so well in south africa, the game here will provide the fringe players an opportunity to impress the national selectors. this was succinctly put by selector and manager madan lal who said: ''with so much cricket being played these days which makes players prone to injury, there is always a possibility of an opening. a good performance gets promptly noticed.'' this will be the focus of the youngsters representing board president's xi during the next three days. those in the reckoning are captain jacob martin, southpaws dinesh mongia, rohan gavaskar, sarandeep singh, murali karthik and wasim jaffer, who missed a well deserved century against the visitors a couple of days back. another good knock from the lanky mumbai opener would definitely push him into contention for the opening slot as the indian management is still searching for a regular opener with shiv sunder das. his opening partner, sanjay bangar, bears watching as a genuine allrounder, as he opens the bowling and batting for railways.sarandeep and karthik would be itching to showcase their guile against the visitors, who did commendably well against nilesh kulkarni, sairaj bahutule and romesh pawar in their earlier game. but with the track looking good for runs, the spinners will have their task cut out. the englishmen, like all visitors to the sub-continent, are still wary of spin bowling. mark ramprakash confessed this saying, ''spin is not a weapon used in our country, but it is a potent one in the sub-continent. so we have to chalk out a strategy to counter it. a batsman's concentration has to be spot on. he also needs a lot of patience. we have to look to build and consolidate our innings. things were no different in pakistan and sri lanka. but the team played really well there, so there is no reason why we should not be able to do so now,'' he added. brave words indeed. but things have changed a lot since those tours and england have ''county journeymen'' in their ranks, who have no experience at the highest level, leave alone playing in the sub-continent. the teams (from): board president's xi: jacob martin (captain), rohan gavaskar, rakesh patel, s sriram, surendra singh, pankaj dharmani, irfan khan pathan, sarandeep singh, tinu yohannan, sanjay bangar, wasim jaffer, murali karthik, dinesh mongia, rakesh dhruve. manager: madanlal. england: nasser hussain (captain), usman afzaal, martyn ball, mark butcher, richard dawson, james foster, ashley giles, warren hegg, matthew hoggard, richard johnson, james ormand, mark ramprakash, graham thorpe, marcus trescothick, michael vaughan, craig white. coach: duncan fletcher.