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Test legend Ian Healy has hit out at the treatment of the Australians in India after another infuriating issue on their tour of the sub continent.
The Aussies, coming off a disastrous defeat in the opening Test, found their plans of a centre wicket practice in Nagpur scuppered with the hosts watering the wicket despite the practice receiving official sanction.
When they turned up for the session the day after the premature end to their Test they found the pitch was unusable.
“I think it’s a pathetic effort,” Healy told SEN on Monday.
“It’s really embarrassing the scuppering of our plans to get some practice sessions on that Nagpur wicket.
“That’s not good, that’s just not good for cricket.”
The lack of a tour match in Indian conditions has been floated as a reason for Australia’s shocking performance in Nagpur.
“The ICC needs to step in here and say, ‘Our nations need to trust each other much better, if you request certain conditions to practice and prepare on, you must get them’,” Healy said.
“For them to water the wicket unceremoniously when it was requested for practice is horrible and that has to improve.”
The second Test gets underway in Delhi on Friday and the make up of the Australian team will be a matter of hot debate all the way up to the toss.
Coach Andrew McDonald claims dumping David Warner has not been discussed “at this stage” but one of the struggling opener’s former teammates is adamant he should get the boot.
Former fast bowler Mitchell Johnson has questioned why Warner was given the nod for the opening Test in Nagpur and Travis Head was given the flick when they both have poor records in the subcontinent but the South Australian left-hander was coming into the series on the back of a much stronger home summer.
Johnson, in a column for The West Australian, wrote that Warner should be dropped for the second Test in Delhi, which gets under way on Friday with Head returning to the middle order and Queensland’s Matt Renshaw elevated to opener.
“If it’s about a horses for courses policy based on previous form in the subcontinent, why didn’t that apply to Warner?”, he wrote. “That’s where it got murky for me.”
“I would drop David Warner, elevate Matthew Renshaw to open and bring Travis Head into the middle order.”
Mitchell Johnson. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
Despite the calls for team changes in the wake of the comprehensive defeat inside three days, McDonald said on Sunday that replacing Warner with Head has not been discussed “at this stage”.
The decision to drop Head, the world’s No.4-ranked Test batter, backfired with Renshaw making a duck and two in the No.5 spot. He also spent much of the second day off the ground with knee soreness.
Talk has centred around Warner’s future for months, but the 36-year-old secured his spot for the tour of India when he smashed a brilliant 200 in the Boxing Day Test. Warner averages a dismal 22.16 across nine Tests in India and registered scores of one and 10 at VCA Stadium.
But McDonald has defended Warner, with no Australia batter passing 50 in either innings of the first Test. “It’s a sample size of one game, in Nagpur,” McDonald said on Sunday. “We haven’t discussed that (Head as opener) at all.
“The benefit out of losing the game so quickly is we’ve got a little bit more think time to work through what scenarios are for us and and that starts (on Sunday).
“We go down to the ground and work through that, but that hasn’t been a discussion at this stage.”
McDonald defended the call to axe Head, who is averaging 45.23 in 33 Tests and hit two centuries last year.
“We valued others skill sets in those extreme conditions,” McDonald said. “The hindsight is that those people that you will compare the competition for place around (Renshaw and Warner) didn’t perform the way that we’d probably expected.
“(Head) had different thoughts on that and that’s fair enough. He’s entitled to have different thoughts on that along with others, and we’re not saying any decision that we make is right or wrong.”
David Warner. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, the third Test between India and Australia has been moved from the picturesque HPCA Stadium in Dharamsala to Indore due to concerns about the surface. The BCCI said harsh winter conditions in the Himalayas meant the outfield has not grown enough grass to host an international match.
Holkar Stadium in Indore will host the contest, scheduled to begin on March 1, instead.
India have played two Test matches at the venue, defeating New Zealand by 321 runs in 2016 and Bangladesh by an innings and 130 runs in 2019.
Veteran offspinner Ravichandran Ashwin has taken 18 wickets at 12.50 in Indore.
The BCCI’s inspection panel visited the Dharamsala ground on Saturday and noted concerns over the outfield.
The last international match played at the stadium was in February 2022 when India hosted two Twenty20s between India and Sri Lanka.
Dharamsala has only hosted one previous Test – the fourth match of the 2017 Border-Gavaskar series which India won by eight wickets to clinch the trophy.
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