Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh has said that his team would have to work harder in order to win in the Caribbean.
The Australians, who arrived on Wednesday night without fast bowler Glenn McGrath and middle-order batsman Damien Martyn, opted not to practise on Thursday.
Waugh said it was always difficult for teams to triumph in the West Indies, where facilities differed and the fans stood behind their players.
"We've got to work harder. It's not a place you can just come and expect to win," Waugh said, as Australia prepared for a tour including four Test matches and seven one-day internationals.\
"This time we are obviously clear favourites, andÂ… people expect us to play well and we expect to play well."
The first Test starts at the Georgetown Cricket Club on April 10.
A heavy workload has forced the scrapping of Australia A's limited-over match with South Africa A in Adelaide on April 12, the Australian Cricket Board.
The ACB said it had agreed with the United Cricket Board of South Africa because of the heavy workload on players during the three-and-a-half-week tour. The match will be withdrawn from the schedule.
The South Africans will now play five limited-over matches and two three-day games against Australia A in Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth from April 4 to 23.
"While the schedule was agreed some months earlier, the practicalities of it are becoming realised and we felt a mid-tour rest would help the players considerably," ACB chief executive James Sutherland said in a statement.
With the World Cup ending on a happy note for the Indian team, the Supreme Court on Friday said the Delhi high court would hear the remittance of foreign exchange involving the sponsors, the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the players.
A bench comprising Chief Justice V N Khare, Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justice Arijit Pasayat said the sponsor, LG Electronics India Pvt Ltd, which had filed the appeal, should put its objections to the petition filed by N K P Salve and others before the high court.
The bench said the high court should hear the matter expeditiously uninfluenced by the observations of the apex court during the previous hearings.
Appearing for the sponsors, senior advocate Ashok Desai said the high court's interim order interfered with the contractual obligations between BCCI and ICC and hence was bad in law.
"Cricket, though watched with passion in India, should not produce bad laws," he added.
The National Cricket Academy committee will meet at Kolkata on April 10 to approve the venues for zonal cricket academies for the current year.
The meeting, to be chaired by NCA chief Sunil Gavaskar, will also select coaches, physios and trainers for the zonal academies and the NCA for the year, academy vice-chairman C K Khanna said in a statement.
The proposals submitted by NCA director and national selector Brijesh Patel and chairman Talent Research and Development Wing Dilip Vengsarkar will also come up for discussion in the meeting, which is likely to be attended by senior Board officials.
At a function, former Indian skipper Bishan Singh Bedi came down heavily on Ganguly for writing in his newspaper column that he was proud of his team, which he had built and moulded on his own in the last 18 months.
"That's pure arrogance. Are the selectors and others in the board all donkeys?" asked Bedi.
"Cricket is a game of humility. Whenever you lose it should be 'I', and when you win it should be 'We'. Not the other way around."
Sehwag could not make it to the function. Nehra answered a few questions from the audience.
Nehra said his 6-23 against England was a memorable performance but the match against Pakistan would probably live in his memory long for the sheer intensity and emotion.
In an interactive session with Nehra, Bedi asked him whether Ganguly had taken him and the other bowlers into confidence before deciding to field first in the final. When Nehra replied in the negative, Bedi launched his attack.
"What am I suppose to understand if the captain does not talk to me before about what he is going to do, and instructs me straightaway to do a thing," Bedi asked.
"I am sorry to say that he is not a bowler's captain at all. Actually, I am not sorry at all about saying that."
"If we have the world's best batting, why do we need to protect it. Eight wins on the trot had not given you the confidence."
"I could see him (Ganguly) trembling at the toss," Bedi said.
Ganguly admitted that the ire of the fans in the country after the team's loss to Australia in the World Cup group league had egged the boys on to play well.
"It was sad the way fans behaved after we lost to Australia in the group league. But that spurred us on. We knew we can't go back home if we don't perform well now," Ganguly said at a felicitation programme organised by the West Bengal government in Kolkata.
The 'Prince of Kolkata' said in Bengali that the team realised after the strong protests by cricket lovers that playing badly would be doing 'injustice' to the people who left everything else to watch them play day after day.
"In South Africa, whenever we had leisure, we surfed through the hundreds of SMS messages that you all sent us. Some suggested what to do when we win the toss. Some prompted which players to play and some others pointed out our weaknesses. It was great to experience the love and concern of so many Indians," he said.
The skipper said whenever the boys played well, the team felt an immense sense of relief for having given fans 'a great time' and making the country proud.
A fine skipper's knock of 73 by Shiv Sunder Das put Elite C on top as the team coasted to 251 for 7 in reply to Plate A first innings score of 263 on the second day of the four day Duleep Trophy cricket match at the Gymkhana grounds in Hyderabad.
Plate A innings, resuming at 241 for 8, folded up at 263 after 41 minutes of play with overnight batsman Rajeev Kumar scoring 61.
Speedsters S K Trivedi and Amit Bhandari accounted for the last two wickets in 10.1 overs.
Ganguly has urged tennis stars Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi to reunite and play doubles together again.
"I would request the 'Indian Express' to play together again. The whole country wants this. I hope they agree to this," Ganguly said after spotting Bhupathi at an informal programme to felicitate him for the Indian team's good show at the World Cup.
The Bhupathi-Paes combination had been nicknamed 'Indian Express' after they became world's number one doubles pair. But the duo split over personal differences for the second time last year.
