india's traditional strengths have always been its line-up of spin bowlers and batsmen. currently, it has a very strong batting lineup with rahul dravid, sachin tendulkar and virender sehwag all being selected to play for the icc world xi in the 2005 "supertest" against australia. in previous times, india was unique in that it was the only country to regularly field three spinners in one team, whereas one is the norm, and of the fifteen players to have taken more than 100 wickets, only four were pace bowlers from the last 20 years. however, in recent years, indian pace bowling has improved, with the emerging talents of irfan pathan, munaf patel and sreesanth and many more playing in the national team.