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There is an ambush awaiting Ricky Ponting’s team in India. It may well be as bloody as the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Will it be Ponting’s last stand?
Will Ponting survive this passage to India and be intact for the Ashes?
The first Test is at Mohali, outside Chandigarh and this is India’s fortress. Since the first match against the West Indies in December 1994, nine Tests have been played and, except for the first, India have never lost here.
It is a good batting surface with even bounce and there have been five drawn encounters.
Australia has played at Mohali once and were soundly beaten by 320 runs in 2008. Ponting got two and five, out to his nemesis Ishant Sharma both times.
Hussey and Watson both got fifties in the match but Australia did not score enough runs. Dhoni, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Gambhir all scored heavily as India scored 469 in the first innings.
India’s spinners took 12 of the 20 wickets and the quicks, Khan and Sharma, the other eight. Australia’s batters may hold their own as India’s quicks are struggling.
However Tendulkar and Sehwag will be salivating at the prospect of the buffet to be served up by Johnson, Bollinger and Hilfenhaus.
Is there a Crazy Horse among these bowlers? Not according to India’s spearhead Zaheer khan who had the following to say after the drawn first Test at Bangalore in 2008: “They know they can’t take twenty wickets and they are on the back foot,” Khan said. “They couldn’t get me or Bhajji [Harbhajan Singh] out. So we are in with a big chance. They are under pressure – we know that.”
Then Australia had Johnson, Lee, Siddle and Watson in the bowling ranks. So we can expect that India’s mindset will not have changed. And this time India plays first at Mohali and then at Bangalore.
On the evidence of the two tests against Pakistan at Lords and Headingley Australia are on a hiding to nothing. Zaheer Khan will exploit any hesitancy in Australia’s batting and Harbhajan will do his best to get under Ponting’s thin skin.
India’s bowling has just taken a mauling at the hands of the Sri Lankan lions but even then they look better than the pussycats that bowled at Lords and Headingley. If North and Watson are now our strike bowlers then Miss Piggy is Bo Derek.
But it is the batting of India that will be scramble-seaming the minds of Johnson and company. Sehwag averages over 50 against Australia and has a strike rate in the seventies. He has three hundreds in 15 matches and a high of 194.
Sachin Tendulkar has a higher average against Australia, 56.08, than his career average of 55. He has been scoring hundreds since 1991 when he was a sixteen year old. The last time he played Australia was the Nagpur test of 2008 where he scored 109 in the first innings.
Rahul Dravid has a lower average against Australia (41.2) against an overall career average of 53. However, batting at three, he has scored more runs against Australia than any other country.
He only has two hundreds but both have been big; in the first he was run out for 180 in the Kolkata classic when he and VVS stopped Steve Waugh’s juggernaut. The second was his 233 at Adelaide when replying to Australia’s massive first innings of 556 (Ponting 242). On both these occasions India won.
Dravid also has seven scores of more than 70 against Australia. Dravid told me in an interview in March this year that he loves testing himself against the best and Australia, for his entire career, has been the best. So The Wall is up for the contest.
Gambhir, Laxman and Dhoni are no mugs with the bat either.
This is a series that may be bigger than the Ashes. The pity is that it is an afterthought when it should have been the main event.
This will showcase two short men. Both giants of the modern game with 25,000 Test runs and 84 Test hundreds between them.
The irony is that these heavyweights may be playing in empty stadiums and the 2010-11 Ashes are already sold out. Thankfully it is being shown live on pay TV.
If Australia cannot get their bowling right there will be blood on the Indian fields and it won’t be the Indian’s bleeding.
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