Former Australian cricketer Ian Chappell believes that the Australian team has a slight advantage over the Indian team in the World Test Championship final with the match being played in England conditions and reckons that the Indian team has a lot of injuries in their team coming into the much-awaited contest.
As India qualified for the WTC final for the second time in a row, Australia will make its debut appearance in the final. World Test Championship final will be a big opportunity for India to end India’s drought in ICC events as the all-exciting WTC final is set to begin on June 7 in Oval.
In his column for Espncricinfo, Ian Chappell feels that injuries to Jasprit Bumrah and Rishabh Pant are a huge blow for the Indian team and also the unavailability of the star all-rounder Hardik Pandya in red-ball cricket as he was not playing test cricket for India.
“The injuries to Jasprit Bumrah and Rishabh Pant badly affect India, as they would be outright favourites with these two playings. The somewhat surprising unavailability of allrounder Hardik Pandya also harms India, as he could have provided them with the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle,” Ian Chappell said.
Chappell feels that it is difficult to predict the winner of the match, due to the injury and lack of red-ball practice for both the teams, as the BGT 2023 was one of the hard-fought series in recent times and reckons that it will depend on the form of the players as the Indian team players are currently playing in the IPL 2023 building up to the one-off test.
“As it should be, this is a hard match to predict. That’s mainly because of injury concerns and neither team has played a Test since completing a hard-fought series earlier this year. To make matters even more difficult, many of the players involved have only competed in the IPL in the lead-up to the one-off Test”.
Meanwhile most of the Australian Test players not participating in the IPL, will come with better preparation than India for the finals and it will interesting to see whether the Rohit Sharma side-side adopted the England condition quickly to give a stiff challenge to Australia and feels their form in the Indian Premier League can transform in WTC final
Australia’s Classy Pace Trio Makes Them Slight Favourites – Ian Chappell
Ian Chappell believes that the Australian pace attack makes them the favourite to win the championship and feels the conditions England would alley their style of bowling and admitted that the Indian team too got potent pace attack as they can pick quick wickets.
“If Australia’s classy pace trio of Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, and Josh Hazlewood are available, that makes them slight favourites. They are good bowlers any time, but England in early June should be right up their alley.
“Nevertheless, an Indian pace attack containing Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, and Umesh Yadav is also strong and only just behind the Australian trio in wicket-taking capability.
“With the match being played under English conditions, this slightly favours the strong Australian pace attack. However, as Bopara showed, you should never underestimate the value of IPL preparation for batters.” Ian Chappell concluded.
Team India lost the inaugural edition of the WTC Final in 2021 against New Zealand at Southampton. India will take on Australia in the 2023 WTC Final at Kensington Oval on June 7, 2023, with a reserve day on June 12.