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Australia vulnerable in first Test against Windies

Fawad Ahmed bowling for Victoria. (AAP Image/David Crosling)
Expert
2nd June, 2015
41
1125 Reads

Australia will be vulnerable in Wednesday’s first Test against the West Indies due to a lack of preparation and their consistent woes on dry pitches.

The tourists enter this series seriously underdone. In the past 15 months, they have had a famine of Test cricket, remarkably playing only six matches, compared to 18 Tests in the 15-month period prior to that.

Their last Test was five months ago in Sydney against India.

Few of their players were involved in the second half of the Sheffield Shield season due to the ODI triangular tournament and the following World Cup. This means most of them have not had any red ball cricket since early January.

The increasingly condensed nature of international tours, particularly those against low-profile teams like the Windies, resulted in Australia having just one three-day warm-up game.

Only five players – Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon, Fawad Ahmed, Shaun Marsh and Adam Voges – actually got anything out of that fixture. The rest of Australia’s Test XI will have to swiftly find their feet on a pitch in Roseau, which is the epitome of those which have troubled Australia over and again.

The Australians have enjoyed a brilliant 18 months in Tests. They destroyed England, upset the Proteas in South Africa and dismantled India Down Under. Those successes however, all came on pitches of a familiar nature.

When confronted with conditions more alien, they stumbled. Actually, they floundered.

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Amid the cluster of rousing victories, they were once again exposed on slow, dry pitches. On a parched Port Elizabeth deck last February they were walloped by 231 runs. The barren surfaces of the UAE prompted further horrid failures. The enigmatic Pakistanis humiliated the tourists.

Both defeats were astoundingly comprehensive. The core of their problem on dry, lifeless pitches has been their inability to adapt to the conditions with the bat.

The two-Test series in the UAE should have been a boring, high-scoring 0-0 draw, such was the lack of assistance for the bowlers.

The Pakistanis fully exploited the batsman-friendly conditions, running up massive totals and scoring freely even when the Australians were bowling well.

When it came time for the tourists to bat, the decks suddenly appeared to be difficult and unpredictable. They were not. They were featherbeds. But Australia’s batsmen consistently flounder in such conditions.

Against the quicks they too often continue to operate as though they are on hard home pitches, looking to unfurl extravagant shots on the up, rather than playing the ball late like the Pakistanis did so effectively last year.

Against the spinners, they too regularly stay glued to the crease, a recipe for misfortune on dry surfaces.

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Again, they should take their lead from the Pakistanis, who never allowed the Australian spinners to settle on a length by either using their feet, employing the sweep shot or exploiting the full depth of the crease.

These issues, combined with Australia’s poor preparation, offer the Windies a golden opportunity to cause an upset in this Test.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul had to go
Yes, it was handled poorly. To hear that the West Indian legend was informed of his dumping in anything other than a face-to-face conversation was shocking.

As one of the most courageous and hard-working players in West Indian cricket history, he deserved far, far better.

But the West Indies selectors made the correct decision in omitting him. As much as it would have been nice to see him battle the Australians one last time, the signs were impossible to ignore that at almost 41 years of age he no longer was able to handle Test cricket.

Not only were his statistical returns awful but he was also struggling to deal with the short ball.

Last month, England’s seamers roughed him up at their gentle 135km/h pace. How would he have coped with 145-150km/h bouncers from Mitchell Johnson, Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc? Chanderpaul’s time is up.

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