Shakya Mitra: Spice missing as old foes clash

It is an uphill task for Aussie bowlers and they must step up in order to avoid a hiding from India

It was famously described as the “final frontier” for Steve Waugh’s all-conquering Australian side of the early 2000s. An India-Australia series was always a much-awaited event on the cricket calendar those days. The giants of the sport against the one team that dared to look them in the eye and compete, with the results to match.

Yet a few days away from the start of the Border-Gavaskar trophy, it won’t be unfair to describe the buzz as being a little thanda in comparison to the competitiveness of some of the series that took place in the early and mid-2000s. A lot of this can be attributed to the one-sided nature of the more recent contests that have ended up being heavily weighted in favour of the home team — since October 2008, in the 18 Tests played between the two sides, the away team has failed to register a single victory.

Shots have already been fired. Former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly, very much in keeping up with his age-old habit of needling the Aussies, predicted a 4-0 series sweep for India at an event in Mumbai. While Australia are in the midst of a rebuilding phase, India are currently playing some of their best cricket ever, having lost just one of their last 20 Tests.  

John Buchanan, the former head coach of the Australian team and someone who toured India twice as coach in 2001 and 2004, seems more optimistic about the Aussies’ chances and terms the inexperience of the 16-man squad a blessing in disguise. “Australia arrives in a winning frame of mind after the series against Pakistan. It arrives with an inexperienced playing group that can mean there are few ghosts of the past lurking among them,” says Buchanan, 63. Australia lost 4-0 on their last tour of India in 2012-13; they lost 2-0 in 2008-09 and 2010-11 as well. 

The Indian team is a formidable unit from top to bottom — its captain Virat Kohli is arguably the world’s finest batsman on current form. Add Murali Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane and it is a lineup with an appetite for piling up big totals. Ravichandran Ashwin is the world’s best spin bowler and recently became the fastest to reach 250 wickets. His partnership with left-arm tweaker Ravindra Jadeja has proved deadly, and if recent evidence against England is anything to go by, the Aussies have to play out of their skins to come out with any respectability from this series.

Australian skipper, Steven Smith

Australia’s batting rests on the shoulders of David Warner, captain Steve Smith and Usman Khawaja. Newcomers Matt Renshaw and Peter Handscomb, drafted in following the humiliation at the hands of South Africa in November last year, have both made confident starts to their careers. The latter, despite his international inexperience, is widely regarded along with Smith as one of the best players of spin from his country. A tour of India is a different challenge altogether. Buchanan, though, seems confident. “If each player in the current batting group can work out their personal method of playing spin, and then execute it consistently, irrespective of initial results, then it is a talented enough batting lineup to post or chase big totals,” he says.

The bowling, however, may yet prove to be Australia’s Achilles’ Heel in the upcoming series — former Australian fast bowler Geoff Lawson recently criticised the composition of Australia’s bowling attack for the series in his column for the Sydney Morning Herald, writing, “To take just three seamers and four spinners, one of whom has no international experience and another with just two Tests to his name, reeks of naivety.” Lawson may be making a valid point. Australia’s series win in 2004 and near-miss in 2001 was achieved on the back of the excellent fast bowling from Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie. However, with every passing visit to India since then, their pacers have regularly been at the mercy of their batsmen. In 2012-13, the most wickets taken by an Aussie pacer over four Tests was just nine. All in all, it is an uphill task for the Aussie bowlers and they must step up in order to avoid a hiding from India.