Currently occupying the No. 1 spot in the ICC Test rankings for teams, Australia are all set to face India in a gruelling four-match Test series, starting February 9 in Nagpur.

With less than a week to go for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, Australia head coach Andrew McDonald has issued a warning for his batters, stating that the biggest challenge will be to tackle "slide spin" from the Indian tweakers in the early overs.

"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)," McDonald had said before the team's departure on Wednesday (February 1).

Since Australia have historically struggled on the Test tour of India, many cricket experts believe that the Pat Cummins-led side should have played tour games leading up to the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2023.

Instead, Australia’s touring party had a pre-series camp on spin-friendly tracks in Sydney and they are currently training in Bengaluru all by themselves to prepare for the ultimate Test against spin.

"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," McDonald was quoted as saying by Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday (February 2).

According to the Australian team management, there was no point in playing practice games as the pitches prepared for tour fixtures and actual matches in India are completely different.

McDonald, who took over from Justin Langer, said another reason for not playing a tour game in India was to keep players fresh.

"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 are 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.

The Australian coach further said they will look to prepare a blueprint while training in Bengaluru and replicate it in Nagpur during the series opener.

"(We'll) get a bit more control in Bangalore to replicate what we're going to come up against and then we go into Nagpur fresh and hopefully it pays dividends at the back end."

(With PTI Inputs)