Team India’s highly-anticipated Test tour of Australia is all set to get underway on November 22 in Perth. The two teams are slated to square off in a five-match series for the first time in over three decades.
Prior to the challenging assignment, the Indian team was supposed to play an intra-squad game against India ‘A’ at the WACA from November 15-17 to fine-tune their preparations.
However, the BCCI decided to scrap the intra-squad game and opted for net sessions and centre-wicket match simulation practices instead.
Moreover, a scheduled warm-up fixture against the Australia Prime Minister's XI before the second Test has also been truncated.
This move hasn’t gone down well with batting legend Sunil Gavaskar, who believes the Indian batters probably needed that practice game in Australia considering the way they failed at home against New Zealand.
“For Indian cricket’s sake (I hope) whoever has taken the call to do away with the warm-up game and then reduce the match between the first and second Test against the Australian Prime Minister’s XI to two days will be proven right,” Gavaskar wrote in his column for Mid-Day.
"To be fair, the Indians did score over 400 in the second innings (of the first Test) in Bangalore, but after that, in four innings they looked utterly clueless against a spin attack that by no stretch of imagination was so dangerous that India couldn’t chase 150 in the fourth innings. Yes, there was turn on offer, but again the pitches were not impossible to play on," he added.
"That is why the cancellation of the team’s warm-up game in Perth against the India ‘A’ team beggars belief. There is no better feeling for a batter to spend time out in the centre and feel the ball hit the middle of the bat. No amount of net practice is ever going to replace that feeling of flow and bat speed that one gets even after a short stay at the crease," he remarked.
Gavaskar further said the batters know they cannot bat once they are dismissed in a warm-up game is among the things that make it more important than a net session.
"Yes, there’s a possibility that the ‘A’ team new ball bowlers may not go flat out because of the worry of injuring a key batter, but that’s more likely to happen in the nets where the pitches are usually not as well prepared as in a match and where the bowlers bowl no-balls without any repercussion. The batters know that in the nets they can be dismissed three or more times and yet continue to bat and then play with no tension or pressure at all. So temperamentally, it’s never going to be the same as playing in a proper match," the former Indian captain stated.
"For the bowlers too, getting into a proper rhythm with run-up and get confident about not overstepping is crucial. What line and length to bowl is also something that one can learn in a proper game and not in the nets."
