The Australian tour of India starts in about a week from now. It is a much anticipated series. Though Australia starts as the favourites, India are expected to fight with them. Australia are coming off of a successful series against South Africa at home and their confidence is boosted by the returns during the last Asian tour. Perhaps, this has what influenced their decision of not opting for atleast one tour game before the series begins. Australians are happy without tour games. Will it turnaround to bite them? Time will tell. Is it a prudent decision? Let’s analyse.
India is the nation that is notorious for skipping practise games or taking them lightly. They are always of the opinion that these games are needless hindrance before the Test series. It is unfortunate that India never really appreciated the value of such tour games. Perhaps, if they had taken it seriously, several results during the past might have been different.
Having said that, Australia are following the same process. The vice captain Steve Smith says that it does not really matter.
“We normally have two tour games over in England. This time we don’t have a tour game in India,” Smith said at the Sydney airport before the team’s departure for India. “The last time we went [to India], I’m pretty sure we got served up a green top [in the tour game], and it was sort of irrelevant.
Probably he is correct. Back in 2017, the pitch during the practise game was quite pacy with lot of bounce. It did not closely resemble the pitch during the first test at Pune which turned square. He is justified in anticipating a bouncy track again if there had been a tour game.
India is a vastly different environment
However, what Smith and the rest of the Australian contingent seems to forget is that any tour game is better than no tour game. Yes, they won in Pakistan and drew in Sri Lanka despite not playing any before the series but India will be a vastly different opponent. Granted that this Indian team is not only severely depleted in terms of confidence but are also completely out of form. Nevertheless, Australia must not expect the series to be a cakewalk for them. India will fight and they might even snip a game. Australia cannot assume that since they have won in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, they are well-versed with the conditions in India. Here it will be vastly different as England found out last year.
Instead Australia have opted to practice on their own with tailor-made pitches at Sydney. The SCG administration sacrificed one pitch which was then scuffed and having significant cracks to replicate the pitch that are likely to be offered. They felt that they are in a better position to control the conditions at home than when on tour though the Bangalore Cricket Administration have promised to ensure that the practice pitches resembles the Test pitches.
“Kieran has done a fantastic job here with the groundstaff to produce exactly what we want,” McDonald said. “We feel as though out there the surfaces we got are very similar to what we’re going to confront in India which is very difficult to replicate, but we feel as though we’ve got close to that, so the ground staff have done a fantastic job.
Wrapping up Australians are happy without tour games
All of these takes my mind back to the series in South Africa. India were high on confidence before that series and everyone expected India to win the series. The BCCI for some reason conducted a series against Sri Lanka just before the tour and it left no time for the Indian team for a lengthy preparation. Nonetheless, the BCCI still arranged for one tour game but Kohli and Shastri in their own wisdom, opted to cancel the game and decided to prepare for a tough series in a few nets session. India went onto promptly lose the first and second tests and thereby the series. They won the last test and everyone were left to wonder what could have been.