***Official*** Top End Series

[adharcric]

A-teams from India, Pakistan and New Zealand will tour Australia for a series of Twenty20, one-day and four-day matches.
The Top End series will take place throughout the month of July in Darwin and Cairns.

[adharcric]

Brad Haddin*+, Cullen Bailey, Travis Birt, Mark Cosgrove, Dan Cullen, Brett Dorey, Ben Hilfenhaus, Brad Hodge, James Hopes, Phil Jaques, Mitchell Johnson, Chris Rogers, Shaun Tait, Shane Watson

[adharcric]

Venugopal Rao*, Parthiv Patel+, Gautam Gambhir, Shikhar Dhawan, Robin Uthappa, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, S Badrinath, TP Singh, Reetinder Sodhi, Piyush Chawla, Ravindra Jadeja, RP Singh, SS Paul, Siddharth Trivedi

[adharcric]

Squad 1
Peter Fulton*, James Marshall, Graham Aldridge, Brendon Diamanti, Mark Gillespie, Jamie How, Michael Mason, Nathan McCullum, Peter McGlashan, Warren McSkimming, Jesse Ryder, Ross Taylor, Lou Vincent

Squad 2
Craig McMillan*, Matthew Bell, Hamish Bennett, Gareth Hopkins, Bruce Martin, Chris Martin, Kyle Mills, Rob Nicol, Mark Orchard, Michael Papps, Jeetan Patel, Mathew Sinclair, Richard Sherlock

[silentstriker]

Teams from Australia and India look relatively strong. I can't comment on the teams from Pakistan and NZ.

[James]

These would be the likely playing elevens for the two New Zealand teams I would say. Squad 1 is stronger in the batting while Squad 2 is stronger in the bowling. Squad 1 is loaded with attacking stroke makers so we could see some big scores, while the Squad 2 batsman are more defensive players (bar McMillan).

Squad 1

Jamie How
Jesse Ryder
Peter Fulton
Lou Vincent
James Marshall
Ross Taylor
Nathan McCullum
Graham Aldridge
Mark Gillespie
Michael Mason
Warren McSkimming


Squad 2

Matthew Bell
Michael Papps
Mathew Sinclair
Craig McMillan
Rob Nicol
Gareth Hopkins
Hamish Bennett
Kyle Mills
Jeetan Patel
Richard Sherlock
Chris Martin

[Haddin]

I am so going to every First Class Game. Not a fan of Twenty-20.

[age_master]

Dan Cullen and James hopes will carry the Aussie bowling attack in the OD games, Dorey should do well in the 4 dayers though. The aussie batting lineup is pretty good though, Haddin, Jaques, Cosgrove, Hopes and Hodge should all do well.

[brockley]

This should be in the series section can someone bump it up there,as there are only 2 series going on.
Hasn't pakistan named their squad,expect pakistan A to have a good fast bowling line up.They may be waiting on naming the pakistan team for england yet,before naming the A side.
The pakistan A side gave us(australia A) a run for our money expect them to be tough.
Dunno how the kiwi squads work which one is for the academy bash in june and which one is for the A series.
Am happy with the aussie A side tho,good to see birt,cullen bailey and bill hilfenhaus in the squad,for reward for good aussie domestic seasons.

[James]

Both NZ 'A' teams will play in the series, so you'll have:

Australia A
India A
Pakistan A
New Zealand A and New Zealand A 2

[James]

The thread will be bumped up closer to the start of the competition.

[Craig]

I'm pleased that the likes of Sherlock, Patel, Ryder, Taylor are there.

How good is Nathan McCullum?

[James]

Originally Posted by Craig

I'm pleased that the likes of Sherlock, Patel, Ryder, Taylor are there.

How good is Nathan McCullum?

Handy off-spinner who's a good lower order batsman. Bruce Martin is probably the better spinner though.

[adharcric]

Originally Posted by James

The thread will be bumped up closer to the start of the competition.

Thanks. I guess one of us will have to post regularly to keep it afloat till then.

[adharcric]

Originally Posted by brockley

This should be in the series section can someone bump it up there,as there are only 2 series going on.
Hasn't pakistan named their squad,expect pakistan A to have a good fast bowling line up.They may be waiting on naming the pakistan team for england yet,before naming the A side.

Pakistan A Probables
Misbah-ul-Haq, Yasir Hameed, Hasan Raza, Rafatullah Mohmand, Mohammad Hafeez, Shahid Yousuf, Shahzad Malik, Fawad Alam, Naved Latif, Yasir Arafat, Mohammad Salman, Amin-ur-Rehman, Wasim Khan, Abdul Rehman, Tahir Khan, Mohammad Irshad, Asad Ali, Anwar Ali, Akhtar Ayub, Jamshed Ahmed, Najaf Shah, Asif Hussain, Mansoor Amjad, Mohammad Khalil, Rizwan Akbar, Samiullah Niazi, Saeed Anwar Jr, Imran Tahir and Naumanullah

I only know about half of these guys, would someone care to provide some details ...