Champs need five days

I fear far too much is being made of Australia’s inexperience. These are tough, hardy men who roll up their sleeves and get to work. The inexperience, if it has to be a factor, is only on certain kinds of pitches and for India to win this series they will have to offer conditions that the visitors like least. One of those, that India don’t seem too inclined to do, is to ask them to play Tests and one-day internationals on the same tour; and indeed, to schedule it in March by which time the tourists will have endured a long season and will look upon the next flight as another 10,000 metre race. The wickets will be spent and crumbly and the heat will favour India. I have often been to Australia and seen how tired visitors are by the time the one-dayers begin and how spent they can be, many flights later, when they reach the final, if they do. But then, that is off-the-field strategy. Not important!

Having used the word “crumbly”, let me hasten to add that those are not the best pitches to play on; just as pitches with far too much bounce aren’t either. To benefit from Australia’s inexperience, India will have to produce turners — not minefields without a surface because that should be inadmissible, but pitches where the ball stops and turns about halfway into the game. That is where I suspect Australia are most vulnerable because they don’t play too much cricket on that kind of surface. It is also the surface where a finger spinner becomes lethal; and, again, that is not something that Aussie kids are used to, either in their backyards or in their academies.

There has always been a certain contempt for finger spinners in Australia because those are hard conditions for them. Pitches are firm, the bounce is even, the ball comes on. So it is wrist spinners, who put much more into each delivery, that have the greater opportunity. That is why finger spinners are as rare in Australia as teetotallers, cropping up ever so rarely from Ashley Mallett to Bruce Yardley to Greg Mathews and Tim May. In recent times they have tried Gavin Robertson, Nathan Hauritz, Dan Cullen and now Jason Krejza. It is exactly the same story as with Indian batsmen on bouncy tracks; you don’t know enough because you don’t play enough.

However, visitors have now realised that third- and fourth-day Indian wickets are pretty good for bowlers who bowl fast and straight, as well. In Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson Australia have bowlers who can bowl fast, and in Stuart Clark they have someone who bowls straight. And that is a very good attack. They need to look back no more than six months to see how South Africa beat India at Ahmedabad with the quick bowlers taking 19 out of 20 wickets. And if Lee has an eye for history he will read of how top quality fast bowlers have always done well in India; from Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshall and Bob Willis through to Wasim Akram. Swing will be the key for him.

Australia will be delighted too at how India are being portrayed in their own media. Open the newspapers or switch to the news on television and you will see obituaries being written for Dravid and Tendulkar and Ganguly and Kumble and even for Laxman — who averages 50.94 in the last twelve months with 917 runs in 13 games! It means the pressure will be on India’s batsmen, as much to take on the Australian bowling as to prove themselves once again to their own countrymen. It is something that a cricketer has to live with but it is the response of these senior cricketers that will be particularly interesting.

If India look to play a game of attrition against Australia they will lose. When India have won at home, they have won with attacking batting that takes the game further from the opposition quickly. It is something that Australia are well aware of and that was behind the extraordinary defensive tactics they so successfully adopted in 2004. They cut India’s attacking shots with some unusual field placings and waited; much like a fisherman does after throwing the bait. In that game of patience, they won: I will be surprised if they do things very differently this time.

But this is a contest between two aging teams. Australia are well into their transition phase having lost McGrath, Warne, Gilchrist, Langer and Gillespie. India are still knocking on that door. Both teams have talked up this series, even placing it above traditional rivalries. Australia think this matches the Ashes and Tendulkar believes, rightly, that it is bigger than playing against Pakistan.

And so to the land that has embraced T20 comes the best Test series there can be. This is as much a test for the two teams as it is for the game itself. Watch out for the cricket but watch out for spectator tastes as well.

The writer is a cricket commentator

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