Australia head coach Andrew McDonald has explained what his team needs to do to win the upcoming four-match Test series against India. The much-anticipated series is scheduled to get underway exactly a week later (February 9) in Nagpur.
In recent years, India have become undoubtedly the toughest place to tour. Since September 2019 India have remained unbeaten in a world record 25 consecutive series across formats. Incidentally, the last team to beat India in India are Australia when they won the ODI series in 2019.
India’s last Test series defeat at home had come against England way back in the 2012-2013 season. As far as Australia are concerned, they last managed to win a Test series in India in 2004. Their recent Test record against India is not encouraging either.
Australia have lost the previous three series against India including two at home. And as the current Australian team gears up to end their recent poor record against India, their coach has explained what they need to do to achieve the herculean task.
Andrew McDonald on tackling spin:
Ahead of the Test series, Andrew McDonald has said that Australia’s biggest challenge would be to tackle “slide spin” from the Indian tweakers in the early overs. The former Australia allrounder has said that the Australian batsmen would have to come up with individual methods and techniques to counter the sliding deliveries.
“I think the new ball is the one that creates more of that slide and when the batters do get done on the inside. We’re preparing for that (during the preparatory camp in Bengaluru),” Andrew McDonald had said before the team’s departure for Bengaluru on Wednesday.
“That slide spin, we’ll expect the spinners to bowl early against our opening batters as well with the new ball so all that is taken care of in the training environment and (batting coach) Diva (Michael Di Venuto) does a fantastic job in preparing.
“The key to success there is to have a clear method and that will be individually based and depending on the conditions we’re confronted with,” he added.
Speaking further, he pointed out one of the reasons behind deciding against playing a tour game in India. The Australia coach said that the reason was to keep players fresh at the back end of the month-long tour.
“We haven’t played a tour game, for three years. It’s probably not something new to us, put it that way,” McDonald said.
“We value freshness at the back end of the tour. Something we’ve seen teams go there before and expend a lot of energy at the front end. We feel with the profile of this group, quite an experienced group, quite an experienced batting unit as well, who have been there before, I think 11 out of the squad has been there before.
“A significant chunk of the squad that’s been there before, so we feel that better places them leading in and then you never get guarantees over those practice game surfaces you get. Often, there’s no real connection between that practice game into the first Test match. We feel as though we can control the surfaces here,” he added.