Rain threat for India-Scotland tie

After the dream Test series victory against Michael Vaughan's side, a buoyant Team India would like to utilise its maiden one dayer against Scotland on Thursday to get into the ODI mode before the seven-match cricket series against England starting next week.

In contrast, Scotland will look forward to the game as a good learning curve as they test themselves against a fancied opponent in India.

However, the one-off tie would be at the mercy of the rain gods with the weathermen predicting rains and the hosts are keeping their fingers crossed.

Just before the series against England, India redeemed themselves in the shorter version of the game after the horrors of the World Cup when they defeated South Africa to win the trophy in Ireland. And Rahul Dravid will be looking to keep that spirit going.

On their part, Scotland are definitely short of both class and experience at this level. Of the seven one day internationals they have played against fancied teams like Australia (2), Pakistan (2), West Indies (2) and South Africa (1), they are yet to record a victory.

On a more positive note, however, they have beaten Ireland -- who did remarkably well in the World Cup -- this season to win their first-ever match against their traditional rivals in four attempts.

For India, it will be interesting to see how good, and fit, Munaf Patel looks after being overlooked for the Test series against England. Also looking to prove a point will be young guns Robin Uthappa, Rohit Sharma, Piyush Chawla and Gautam Gambhir.

Sachin Tendulkar and Yuvraj Singh had a great series in Belfast and they will be keen to continue the good work along with Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

Ajit Agarkar was also one of the success in that series and on the evidence of the way Ishant Sharma went about his business in England, India would have been better served keeping faith in the Mumbai pacer.

The hosts have done well to summon all their top stars who were busy doing duty in the English County.

Scotland's captain, Ryan Watson will be delighted to see his trusted colleagues in Navdeep Poonia, Gavin Hamilton, John Blain and Dewald Nel join forces so that they can give a good account of themselves in the one-off tie.

Of course the weather hasn't been kind to cricket -- India's one-off game against Pakistan last month also got washed out -- and the organisers will only be hoping for some diving intervention to have a full fifty over game.

Teams (From):

India: Rahul Dravid (captain), Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir, Robin Uthappa, Rohit Sharma, Dinesh Kaarthick, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ramesh Powar, Piyush Chawla, Ajit Agarkar, Zaheer Khan, Rudra Pratap Singh, Munaf Patel

Scotland: Ryan Watson (captain), John Blain, Gordon Drummond, Gavin Hamilton, Majid Haq, Paul Hoffmann, Neil McCallum, Navdeep Poonia, Dewald Nel, Colin Smith, Fraser Watts, Craig Wright.