India's tour of Australia | High expectations from Pujara, battle of equals in pace department

ind vs aus 4th test day 2 Cheteshwar Pujara 150

For the first time, ever since a cricket match live broadcast began from Australia to India, fans will not have to wake up early in the morning to catch up with what is happening Down Under in Test cricket! In fact, it will be the only time when a Test against Australia in Australia will start from 9:30 AM IST which is the standard time for a Test match to start in India. However, none of the Indian players will be paying any attention to such trivial things since their focus is on how to stop the Australian juggernaut in pink-ball matches where they have registered 7 wins out of 7 on their soil.

Lack of hype for a great rivalry of modern times

The lack of hype around India-Australia series is a bit unusual especially if you compare it with the recently concluded IPL but then IPL is a different beast altogether. “India can win this forthcoming series in Australia, it will have shifted the cricketing world on its axis,” says Tim Lane Sports columnist for the Sunday Age in a promotional video for Channel 7 which has got the telecast right for the Border-Gavaskar trophy. ​Although, the Indian fans are used to iconic Channel 9’s feed from Australia for generations. You may not entirely agree with some of the punching lines of the promo but you can’t be dismissive either when it says: “Sport reaches its highest form when there’s genuine rivalry. When it’s more than a contest. In cricket we have the Ashes – Australia and the old enemy, England. But now, there’s a great modern enemy. This is Australia v India, and it’s not to be missed.” Indeed, if India is a modern enemy for Australia then Australia is the modern enemy for India as well since India hardly plays bilateral cricket against arch-rival Pakistan. For every cricketer, it is a dream to be part of a winning Test series in Australia and India knows it very well since their only triumph came last time in 70 years. An encore is not something easy to achieve in Australian soil. Of course, the Aussies are no longer the intimidating team they used to be as they have lost 3 consecutive Test series to South Africa since 2008 and one each to England (2011) and India (2019).

​​The Pujara encore​ possible?​

Since captain Virat Kohli will be featuring in this only Test, a different kind of expectation will be from Cheteshwar Pujara. The Sourashtra batsman was pivotal to India’s success last time around with his 571 runs which included three hundreds. However, even great Rahul Dravid failed to achieve success twice on Australian soil despite touring four times. The Aussies know and must have planned for Pujara and absence of Kohli in the remainder of the series will put a lot of pressure on him.

Even great Rahul Dravid failed to achieve success twice on Australian soil despite touring four times

Despite missing senior-most pacer Ishant Sharma’s experience, India still has a formidable trio of Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav who are as good as the triumvirate of Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc. In the 2018-19 series, the host pacers took 40 wickets and India replied with 48 wickets! Just for the first Test, Australia may have an advantage with a left-arm angle of Starc who incidentally is lethal and best in the pink-ball matches with 42 wickets at an average of 19.23 in seven day-night Tests. Yet, Australia will try to remind India that how they struggled in New Zealand (their last Test series) when Ishant got injured. Ishant had been touring since 2008 and none can replace his kind of massive experience of bowling on different kinds of Australian tracks.

Lyon has edge over Ashwin

Ironically, India looks inferior in the spin department. Despite Ravichandara Ashwin’s pedigree in Test cricket, it’s Nathan Lyon who has been the premier off-spinner of the world. More so in Australia and even more in day-night matches. Out of the 16 bowlers with five-wicket hauls with the pink ball, only five are spinners. And Nathan Lyon (28 wickets in seven matches) is best. In fact, his numbers are the second-most for any bowler in day/night Tests behind his team mate Mitchell Starc. Last time, Lyon had grabbed 21 wickets alone while all the Indian spinners had managed 18 in total.

​​India’s X factor will be missing

During the One Day series, Hardik Pandya was a better batsman than Kohli. In 3 matches, he got 210 runs at an average of 105. Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan and KL Rahul scored more runs than Pandya in the T20 series but it was the belligerent impact with bat that he was chosen man of the series for his 78 runs (avg. 39 and strike rate of 156). Critics can always argue that with a middling average of 32 in Test cricket, it was risky to pick Pandya purely as a Test batter for this series. However, the case studies of Adam Gilchrist(SR 81.95), Virender Sehwag(SR 82.23) and David Warner(SR 76.99) show that a ferocious striking ability is rare and also easily to be shrugged off as just white-ball skill in the early stages of any young player. Besides the above mentioned three players, only Shahid Afirdi (SR 86.97) and Kapil Dev (SR 80.91) have better strike rate in Test cricket than Pandya among modern batters.

The host still feel that it was the absence of Warner and Steven Smith in the last series which gave India a huge advantage in winning its first-ever Test series. With Warner ruled out from the Adelaide Test and Smith still not 100 percent certain, can India exploit this factor in its first-ever day-night Test overseas which starts from Thursday?