New Delhi: Even before India’s Test season began, cricket fans were focused was on one marquee clash—a five-match series with Australia towards the end of the year. From blooding new faces in both batting and bowling departments to discussing possible outcomes, the Border-Gavaskar Trophy has captured the imagination of many.
India and Australia have met on the path to greatness on several occasions in the recent past, and the rivalry has only intensified between the fans and analysts on both sides.
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Over the last four series, the Test matches in Perth have been bellwether performances for the Men in Blue, be it Ishant Sharma’s 2008 seam bowling against Ricky Ponting, Umesh Yadav bowling the ‘Punter’ (Ponting’s nickname) an ‘absolute jaffa’ in 2011, or Virat Kohli producing two solid Test scores on a lively WACA surface in the same match. Their careers in the longest format of the game are proof.
With Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill ruled out of the first game because of paternity leave and an injury respectively, at least two batting slots are open for young players such as Abhimanyu Easwaran and Devdutt Padikkal to cash in.
The window of opportunity could open up a host of possibilities for the two players, especially with questions over the future of Rohit and Kohli in light of their advancing age and recent slump in form.
The likes of Sarfaraz Khan and Dhruv Jurel are likely to compete for spots lower down the order and while the former might be feeling the heat of Jurel’s impressive outing with the bat against Australia A before the series, a five-match competition is good enough to make or break careers, especially with the current state of Indian cricket.
In the bowling department, Akash Deep, who has emulated his senior Ranji Trophy teammate Mohammed Shami’s seam position, would hope to face the left-handers with newer balls. Although it doesn’t look like he can produce the same pace off the surface as Shami could, he has shown promise.
In another repetition of the trend of K.L. Rahul’s start-stop Test career, he is back in the reckoning—but only because of the team’s circumstances.
This has echoes of the 2021 tour of England when he was not even in the reckoning to open alongside Rohit until Mayank Agarwal was ruled out of the first Test after being hit on the head. Rahul was able to score a century in Nottingham, performing well for the rest of the series.
Last year too, during the tour of South Africa, Rahul was in contention against K.S. Bharat after Ishan Kishan sought time off from the game. The balance was tipped in the former’s favour since he has been rated highly by coaches and captains.
It looks like the situation is repeating itself this time. It is unlikely India will go with both Easwaran, with no Test experience, and Padikkal, with a solitary Test behind him, at the top of the order, increasing Rahul’s chances of being named in the starting XI.
But Rahul’s record has shown an unreliable form, and whether this affects his chances of playing is a factor to watch out for.
During the 2021 Test tour of England, the Kohli-led team management opted for Ravindra Jadeja over Ravichandran Ashwin for the entire length of the tour which lasted four Tests. The trend continued under the Rahul Dravid-Bumrah management too when they returned to England to complete the series.
However, during the last tour of Australia in 2020-2021, Jadeja’s injury before the first Test and Shami’s injury in the first Test put Ashwin and Jadeja together over the next two Tests because they formed the best bowling attack.
The selection of spinners this time, however, has been complicated by the entry of Washington Sundar, who scripted history against New Zealand in Pune and Mumbai, and Nitish Kumar Ready, the 21-year seam bowling all-rounder.
The Perth surface offers extra bounce to finger spinners and variable bounce towards the end, making this selection crucial. Whether they are selected or not, it will also tell players where they stand in the larger scheme of things.
With Kohli having scored only one half-century in the past five Tests, questions are mounting over his form ahead of the first Test starting Friday. India will need the Kohli of old with the bat to make up for the absence of Rohit and Gill at the top of the order. The build-up to the Test series by Australian papers has centred around him and not for the first time, all eyes are on him in Australia.
Kohli’s Test career took off in 2011 in the same city when he stood tall among the batting order comprising Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, and VVS Laxman by scoring 44 and 75 in two innings to never look back in his Test career.
But Indian fans and management will hope that Kohli can prove himself come 22 November, as he did in 2018 when he hit a hundred on the same grounds after Cummins’ jibe to the press that Kohli would not score any hundreds in that series.
However, he has a number of challenges: his ability to pick length has diminished considerably in the recent past, and his over-reliance on the front foot and shutting down boundary options off the back foot has also put extra pressure on his famous cover drive which bowlers are now increasingly exploiting by bowling wider from his off stump. He will need to reactivate whatever back-foot game he has developed over the years as a predominantly front-foot player.
It’s often said that bowlers win games of cricket, more so in Test matches where you have to take all the 20 wickets on offer to win the game. However, a faltering batting unit can lose the team the game set up by bowlers.
Over the last two Test tours, Indian bowlers did not let the hosts breathe with the bat but the underlying aspect of those two historic Test series wins was the fact that every time the Australian batting lineup posted above-par totals, India also played its best in response.
For instance, in 2021, when Steve Smith’s batting threatened to take the game away from India in Sydney, Hanuma Vihari and Ashwin kept the series alive.
When nothing could separate the bowling performances of the two sides, the runs added by Washington and Shardul Thakur in the first innings and Gill and Pant in the second innings won India the series decider at the Gabba in 2021.
When India was down and out after getting bundled out for a mere 36 in the first Test in Adelaide, Ajinkya Rahane and Jadeja lifted the side to a good position with the bat.
In the 2018-19 series, the batting performances of Pujara and Kohli one after another left the Australian team, playing without Smith and Warner, behind.
While India could not have won without its bowling performances on the previous two tours, the batting performances were equally important. This will be another factor in play in this edition of the series named after two greats of the game—Allan Border of Australia and India’s Sunil Gavaskar.
According to the fixtures, the first test will be played at Perth Stadium from 22-26 November; the second in Adelaide Oval (December 6-10), the third at The Gabba, Brisbane, between 14-18 December, followed by the fourth at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (26-30 December), wrapping up in Sydney Cricket Ground (3-7 January).
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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