"In Test cricket you aren't trying to slog the ball out of the park - you are trying to play proper shots and stitch an innings together, and that is where I think Virender Sehwag is a better player than Yuvraj Singh" © AFP

Akhila Ranganna: Hello and welcome to Bowl at Boycs. With me is Geoffrey Boycott, who's all set to answer the questions that have come in for him.

The first question that we have on the show has come in from Vijay Narsimhan, from India. He thinks that India are poor starters both at home and away and he believes that it is due to too little gap between games and the lack of enough time to acclimatise or play practice games. Do you agree or disagree with him?

Geoffrey Boycott: I disagree with him a little bit. I think India are at their best when they bat first and put pressure on the opposition. It's a little bit like playing one-day internationals. I don't think India are very good at chasing in one-day cricket as they are when they bat first and set a target. I think they are more comfortable batting firsts in Tests also. They know that pitches in India turn and they know that their spinners will come into play, especially after the pitch starts to deteriorate. I think it's a mental thing, especially since the spinners are not that effective on the flat pitches on day one and two as they are when they start to deteriorate and after day three.

AR:Geoffrey, Matt Matahaere from New Zealand was wondering if you could give him any suggestions or tips on watching the ball from the bowler's hand?

GB: Some batsmen watch the bowlers as they set off on their run-up and they watch the ball in the hand all the way from there. There are some other batsmen who don't bother about it until the bowler is about three strides away from delivering the ball. That is a personal choice.

I think every batsman watches the ball in the bowler's hand. They then watch it travel down the pitch because that then decides whether to play forward or back, whether to duck or weave, whether to play or leave it. The crux of the matter is that the great players actually watch the ball hit the bat. That might seem simpler than it actually is. There are lots of players who watch the ball and see it till it is nearly onto the bat. But do they actually see it hit the bat? No.

One good tip for Matt when he is practising is - after every ball, see if you can say to yourself: 'I know exactly which part of the bat that ball hit.' The bat is only four-and-a-quarter inches wide, and if you're really watching it from the bowler's hand, the key is to watch it hit the bat. If you can say to yourself after every ball, 'I hit that ball exactly there,' then you know you are watching the ball.

AR:Matt, I hope that helps you out. The next question is from Hardik Mehta. He thinks that the standard of Australian domestic cricket is excellent, and often quality players have to wait for a long time to play for Australia. Then how come there isn't a quality spinner around when they need one the most on this Indian tour? How come there seems to be a vacuum after Shane Warne's retirement?

GB: Australia have been at the top for so long and they have had such quality players that we always assume they will keep having these great players. That doesn't always follow. Life is like a cycle: there will be periods of ups and downs. There was a period in Australian cricket when they had two quality spinners, Bill O'Reilly and Clarrie Grimmett. And they have now reached a stage where they have spinners who you and I would term as okay but nothing special. They wouldn't keep batsmen awake at night thinking about them. From what I have seen of them so far, they look very ordinary. Just because Australia have been the champions of one-day and Test cricket, one shouldn't assume that it will stay like that forever.

AR: The next question is from Rajat Rathi from the United Kingdom. He says that drawing from what you said in your last show about Yuvraj Singh, if we compare Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj, both batsmen have very similar techniques. Both rely heavily on hand-eye coordination and both are aggressive by nature. They also have more or less similar one-day records. So why is Sehwag such a successful Test batsman while Yuvraj has mostly failed to impress in the Tests?

GB: I agree with him that both Sehwag and Yuvraj have great hand-eye coordination. I am not so sure that they play in the same fashion. If you watch Sehwag carefully, he is technically very correct. He does have a fluent swing of the bat, but so does Yuvraj. Although Sehwag scores fast, his shots are of normal, textbook nature. He plays on the off side, the on side, he plays the square cut. Yes he plays a bit on the up; he has got beautiful timing and has beautiful hand speed and he actually plays fairly naturally but normally.

Yuvraj's defence is not very good. When the ball is moving around, he doesn't defend as well as Sehwag. I have always thought this about batting: if you can't stay in, you can't make runs. And I think Yuvraj's defence, his footwork, the closeness of his bat to his pads, what to play and what not to - he's not as good as Sehwag in all these aspects. And that is where the problem is. If both of them are whacking it in one-day cricket, I think Yuvraj is more devastating than Sehwag because he can hit good-length balls out of the park. But in Test cricket you aren't trying to slog the ball out of the park. You are trying to play proper shots and stitch an innings together, and that is where and why I think Sehwag is a better player than Yuvraj.

AR:Amit from India says that with Sourav Ganguly calling it a day, we won't be able to see one the most prolific and explosive opening pairs in one-day cricket in form of Sachin Tendulkar and Ganguly. My question is, according to you who do you think are the best opening pairs that you have seen in one-dayers in the past 25 years and why?

GB: Well, without a shadow of doubt it has to be Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist. Hayden is a big, tall, strong lad who likes to get on the front foot and bully the bowlers. He is aggressive right from the word go. And Gilchrist is just the opposite. Both of them may be left-handers, but Gilchrist is a natural striker of the ball. Batting at the top of the order in one-day cricket he didn't have to change his game. A lot of sides and try and send someone at the top who can play a lot of shots, but that is a natural way of playing for Gilchrist. He is a good off-driver; he cuts and pulls the short ball. And because he is a left-hander, you haven't got much margin for error. If you bowl slightly wide he will cut you, if you bowl slightly short he will cut you, and if you pitch it up he will drive you. I thought the pair of them were excellent.

Tendulkar and Ganguly would complement each other. There was a period when they were absolutely brilliant. You had Tendulkar, a great player, orthodox, technically sound, with a heavy bat; he could score boundaries and singles easily. And then you had Ganguly who's an off-side player. Bowlers tend to attack the off stump because that is their natural way of trying to get the batsmen out. But Ganguly had this exceptional timing; he was a natural boundary-hitter, with exceptional placement, and in no time at all the ball was whistling around without any need for slogging. And both of them were big hundred men. When Ganguly made way for Sehwag in the one-day team, up till that point Ganguly was second in number of one-day hundreds only to Tendulkar. And then he let Sehwag have a go at the top and he's done quite well. But I thought the pair of them were outstanding.

AR: We'll now move onto the question that you have picked as the best one that has come in for you and it is from Jon Hotten from the United Kingdom. He reckons that Ricky Ponting will no doubt be reflecting on the fact that in Harbhajan Singh and Ishant Sharma he is facing two bowlers who have dismissed him more often than almost any others. How does Ponting prepare himself psychologically for that challenge, and how do you best approach facing a bowler who has consistently dismissed you?

	"At the point in time when Ricky Ponting is playing Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma he's just not at his best - his footwork is not quite there" © AFP

GB: Well, the key thing to do is be honest with yourself. You have to ask yourself the question: how good were the deliveries that got me out? Did I do anything wrong? Can I do anything to make it better? You have got to make sure that you don't tell yourself that you were unlucky. You will as a batsman occasionally get really good deliveries and it is your job to stop them. It's no good saying that you got a good ball, your job is to keep such deliveries out.

When it comes to Ishant and Zaheer; Ponting will be saying to himself: I am a good player, what did I do wrong? I saw Ishant bowl Ponting out with a big nip-backer, and if Ponting is honest with himself he will accept that he was a bit late in his footwork. It went right through the gate and it's rare to see top batsmen getting out like that. I watched his footwork and I think he was late getting forward to the delivery. But at the same time let's not take credit away from Ishant, I think he is a very good bowler.

What Ponting can do is improve on his own technique. This doesn't mean that he needs to do anything different. Over the years he has been a brilliant player for Australia and there can't be anything wrong with his batting; but just at the point in time when he is playing Zaheer and Ishant, he's just not at his best. His footwork is not quite there and that is what he needs to work at.

Everybody should remember this: if you bat in the first three, you are nearly all the time going to face the best new-ball bowlers. They have the opportunity with the new ball to get at you. As a batsman, then, it's your job to bat well and have a good record. If you turn it around the other way, it's the job of the opposition bowlers to get wickets, sometimes with the new ball. If they don't get the top three batsmen out with the new ball, they are not doing their job. So you have to expect that occasionally they are going to get you out. And India have two top-class performers with both the new ball and old ball in Ishant and Zaheer. So Ponting shouldn't be too hard on himself. He needs to be sensible and analyse if he could have done anything better, and the answer for that is: yes. Does he need to change anything? I don't think so. He should just keep doing what he has done but do it a bit better.

AR: That's a wrap on today's show. Thank you for your views Geoffrey. Don't forget to send your questions in to Geoffrey using our feedback form. He'll be answering them right here in a fortnight. Until then it's goodbye.