Indian spin will smother Aussies in T20Is

Australia’s faltering T20I batting line-up is set to face an even tougher task over the next week against an elite Indian bowling group boasting three quality spinners and arguably the world’s best T20 quick.

The home side’s aggressive batting unit failed to click across their five recent matches – four in the UAE and one at home against South Africa.

The bad news for Australia is that India are well equipped to exploit their weakness against spin in the three-match T20I series which starts tomorrow in Brisbane. India could field three strong spin options, with two frontline tweakers supported by spin bowling all-rounder Krunal Pandya.

For their specialist spin options India have the luxury of choosing from three very good T20 bowlers in left-arm wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav, leg spinner Yuzvendra Chahal and off spinner Washington Sundar. I expect India to play two specialist spinners alongside Krunal Pandya, death bowling ace Bhuvneshwar Kumar, and superstar white ball quick Jasprit Bumrah.

While 19-year-old Sundar is practically unknown in Australia, he is an outstanding international prospect. Remarkably accurate for someone so young, Sundar has gone at just 6.03 runs per over in his seven T20Is to date while picking up ten wickets at an average of 17.

Sundar may not yet have the bulging bag of tricks possessed by some other spinners, but he is relentlessly precise, reads batsmen well and uses subtle variations in pace and flight which make it hard for batsmen to find their range.

Yet it is the two Indian wrist spinners who Australia will probably have to contend with first. Kuldeep and Chahal have dominated T20Is in the past two years, combining to take 73 wickets at 16. While neither of them is as frugal as Sundar, both are out-and-out strike bowlers.

Chahal attracts less praise than Kuldeep but is a crafty and ultra-attacking bowler who targets the stumps. He isn’t a big turner of the ball but earns nice dip and has the ability to bowl very quickly for a wrist spinner. While Kuldeep loops the ball tantalisingly, trying to beat the batsmen through the air, Chahal is faster and flatter and looks to skid the ball on and catch batsmen on the crease.

I recently detailed the threat Kuldeep would pose to Australia this summer. As I argued in that piece, Kuldeep has “every attribute of a champion wrist spinner – composure, confidence, accuracy, variety, deceiving flight, and the ability to rip his deliveries, rather than just roll them out like most spinners we see these days”.

(David Davies/PA via AP)

In particular, Kuldeep has one of the best googlies I’ve ever seen. More precisely, he has several of the best googlies I’ve ever seen. He possesses the standard wrong ‘un, the one which is released from the back of the hand. Kuldeep also has another, which he bowls with just one finger on top of the ball instead of the standard two, which allows him to impart googly-style turn without having to turn his wrist around as far. The most perplexing one, however, is the googly he somehow delivers from the side of his hand.

Kuldeep’s googlies are particularly dangerous to right-handed batsmen, and Australia have a heap of them – Aaron Finch, Chris Lynn, Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis and Ben McDermott. Meanwhile, left-handers D’Arcy Short and Alex Carey aren’t exactly commanding players of spin. Short much prefers pace on the ball and frequently gets bogged down against spin, and Carey is too reliant on sweeping the slow bowlers, which makes him predictable.

Maxwell, Stoinis and Finch are the three Australian batsmen best equipped to combat India’s spin battalion. But Stoinis has struggled badly in his T20I career to date, averaging 11 with the bat from 14 matches, and also has a poor overall T20 record. Finch, meanwhile, has lost touch over the past month after previously being in scorching white ball form.

In that time Finch has made scores of 7, 1, 3, 0 and 1 in the shortest format to go with just 57 runs at 19 in the ODIs against South Africa. A punishing player of spin on his day, Australia badly need Finch to regain form quickly if they are to avoid being dismantled by India’s awesome spin attack.