The Indore pitch was supposed to help India launch to a 3-0 lead in the Border-Gavaskar trophy. Instead, it unravelled within three days. Robert Craddock says the hosts had it coming.
Will Australia throw a cavalier Travis Head in the face of England’s crafty opening bowlers Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson and a new Dukes ball which may swing like a soap sud?
Or do they play him down the order given that, as Michael Vaughan says, the Dukes ball tends to stop swinging after 30 overs giving middle order cavaliers like Head the chance to unleash their bayonets?
This is one of the biggest questions facing Australia in this year’s Ashes series against a revitalised England team committed to playing gung ho cricket.
Bring it on!
Head’s short, sharp and spectacular decimation of India’s stunned spin attack in Australia’s stunning win over India in Indore has given his side some Ashes options and they are welcome ones at that.
What a turnaround. All things considered, Australia’s Test win was one of its finest wins — anywhere — and it came against an Indian set-up which got what it deserved for shameless pitch doctoring.
The challenges confronting Australia were immense, ugly and intimidating – and everywhere.
Four players in the original Australian squad had returned home. India had lost just two of their last 44 home Tests and were 2-0 up in the series.
Australia lost the toss for the first time in nine Tests and batted second on a crumbling deck.
They started the Test neck deep in quicksand. There was no logical way Australia could win this Test – but they did.
It was a superb performance against all of the supreme challenges an Indian tour can throw at you, particularly a doctored wicket left so dry and cracked it ended up nullifying the spinning edge India had in the first two Tests.
Steve Smith did a wonderful job as captain and Nathan Lyon deserves immense credit for his eight wicket second innings haul.
Lyon once told a story about a Test in England where he put a recording of rain on a tin roof overnight to relax him for a major bowling assignment.
He used to acutely feel the pressure of being “the man’’ in the final innings and early in his career he struggled in Asia. But he has grown and learnt and improved.
India never mention him as a major threat yet he has dismissed Cheteshwar Pujara 13 times in Tests, Rohit Sharma eight and Virat Kohli seven and, as documented by Code Sports, is just one wicket behind the great English left-arm spinner Derek Underwood as the most successful touring Test bowler in India.
This is a dam-busting statistic.
Surprisingly, overseas spinners often find touring India tough work and even the legends Muttiah Muralidharan and Shane Warne averaged mid-40s per wicket there.
Young tweakers Matt Kuhnemann and Todd Murphy also deserve credit for holding their line and nerve under the pressure so great that every conceded boundary seemed to be worth three times what it would be on another day when runs were easier to come by.
The young duo have played just 22 first class games between them yet you wouldn’t know it. When Australia last won a series here in 2004, Kuhnemann was seven year old and Murphy three.
They have grown up witnessing nothing more than heartache for Australia in Indian conditions.
Young players thrown into Test cricket can fade throughout a series. This duo seemed to become stronger.
They are made of strong stuff and could only have helped their cause to have the understated New Zealand left-armed spinning great Dan Vettori in their corner as Australia’s assistant coach.
Originally published as India v Australia: Robert Craddock reviews third Test in Indore