In the morning rush at Bangalore airport, three men were fooling around near the conveyer belt while waiting for their bags. Dressed in casuals, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir and Ishant Sharma seemed a part of the city’s festive-season tourists. As they joked animatedly, taking breaks to sign autographs and pose for cell-phone photos, it wasn’t easy to tell that a lot would depend on this trio in the upcoming Test series against Australia.

Include pace spearhead Zaheer Khan to the group and and we have two opening batsmen and two new-ball bowlers, the full set of players that will be required to make a good first impression on the Aussies.

When India last played against Australia, the 20-year-old Sharma had played the biggest role, involved in three of the four Tests. Zaheer got injured after the first, Sehwag played the last two while Gambhir wasn’t even on the tour.

A lot has happened since that closely fought series in which India didn’t have a stable opening partnership or bowling combination. As the talking point of the upcoming Test is the future of the aging stars, Anil Kumble, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly VVS Laxman are in the spotlight, while the four in-form players have been left alone.

While the Delhi players were checking in at the team hotel, the Chinnaswamy Stadium was preparing for a function in which Sachin Tendulkar was to lift the curtain on a wall consisting of 10,000 bricks, made in honour of local hero Rahul Dravid’s run tally in Test cricket.

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