I think the advantage of batting first is evened out by the disadvantage of bowling second with dew, apart from the first 10-15 overs when the ball moved around. Any team which didn’t lose many wickets found the batting easier after the initial hour. Pakistan recorded their highest chase as they didn’t lose any wickets in the initial overs. Same was the case with NZ yesterday. Williamson and Mitchell ensured they didn’t lose anymore wickets after the initial 2 and played slowly till 15th over, gradually starting to attack after that and even threatening to close in on the target at one stage. The Indian bowling was under immense pressure for the first time bowling under lights and it was only the pressure of score board that skittled NZ. Even if India scored 350, which might look good normally, under lights, it would have been too easy for NZ.

Indian media, as is the case with most media everywhere in this era, just require click bait headlines. The one game India played on a slow wicket, vs England, they struggled to make it to 230. So, I don’t know why they would ask for a slow pitch against a bowling attack as experienced as Boult, Santner, who are adept at exploiting slow wickets.

One of reasons why they are keeping the wicket dry with just a little moisture is to ensure that when the dew comes in the second innings the wicket won’t turn out to be an absolute road for the team batting second. This evens out winning toss a bit even if it doesn’t remove the advantage completely. While there has been movement in the first 10-15 overs under lights, batting has become easier after that in the second innings. Problem was not many teams held on to wickets to reach 15 over mark to exploit the conditions, which NZ did very well yesterday and at one stage even threatened to close in on the target. Unless the Indian team was certain to win the toss they couldn’t have asked for a specific kind of pitch. So, the pitch that was selected evened out the advantage of winning the toss and the dew factor in the second innings.

Surya Kumar Yadav.

I am not sure likeability is a factor as the Aussies under Steve and Ponting weren’t liked by all but still recognised as great teams. I also believe that we have a tendency to romanticise the past and not recognise greatness as it happens. Once his career ends Steve Smith will be counted amongst the great batsmen, even if his average falls back to around 50’s. Warner may not be a great batsman in all conditions but what he brings to the team isn’t just runs, but the mad fighting spirit, which sometimes can get a bit too much, but still is essential. Same with Cummins and Lyon and Starc.

An example of looking at past with rosy lens is the fact that many tend to diminish batting averages of current batsmen saying that the pitches, bats and rules are in their favour but at the same time don’t recognise that in the light of the above, the achievements of current crop of top bowlers are probably even more great than the greats of the past who played in conditions which still had something for the bowler, especially fast bowlers.

Another major aspect is that when the past great teams of Aussies played the number of countries which could put on a strong team was probably limited. After 90’s WI were on a terminal decline apart from a few individuals who still took the fight forward. India had good batsmen but never had the bowling resources to compete anywhere other than at home. Pakistan was Pakistan. Sri Lanka was just emerging to be a contender, but just like India just didn’t have enough to put on a fight apart from their home conditions. NZ were a good team which never became a great one, though still had a great fight in them. England, apart from a few years in the mid 2000’s weren’t a great team in spite of being a traditional cricketing power. It was only SA which had a great team and I believed gave the Aussies their toughest challenge, at least in Tests. If the Indian batting line up of 2000’s had the current pace bowling resources, that would have been something. The current Aussie team has to fight with teams which have evolved and become pretty good over the years. So, there are more challengers, at least 4 teams, which can and have pushed this team. In this context what this team has achieved may not be as great the one’s under Waugh or Ponting but certainly not too far behind.

I believe that even a bowler as great as McGrath would find the going not so easy with the batsmen friendly pitches. And to top that, during those times the bowlers knew the shots a batsmen could play. Now even a traditional batsmen like Joe Root is reverse scooping a fast bowler, and even in Tests.

As an Indian I am not sure why people in Australia still feel that the sandpaper was all the doing of Warner alone. There is no way such a thing can happen without knowledge of team, especially bowlers and captain.

From my observations over the years, I think the way Warner behaves when he dons the Aussie jersey is quite different from when he is playing in IPL. Australians always played aggressive cricket which blurred the lines between what is acceptable behavious and what isn’t. Warner is that guy in the team who is more than willing to be a bully for his team. His very aggressive behaviour is peculiar to when he is playing for Australia. He was as competitive in IPL and even lead my franchise, SRH, to victory, but never displayed the sort of aggressive behaviour that he seems to display when he plays for Australia. So it might have to do with team culture and he willing to do the dirty work for the team when playing for Australia. With SRH in IPL, he was the most loved player. In fact fans showed their disgust to team management when they dropped Warner from the squad. Such is his appeal and closeness with the fanbase at SRH. So, he isn’t entirely what he is made out to be and part of his behaviour can be because of the team culture in the Aussie dressing room.

Looks like this young man imbibed the stroke making of Sachin and temperament of Rahul Dravid, the greats after whom he was named.

A few corrections.
Hyderabad doesn’t normally have high humidity unlrss it is rainy season, which is between June – September.
The pitch at Hyderabad is also amongst those with true bounce and good for batting. One of the squares is a slower pitch and does help spin but was mostly used by SRH, the home franschise in IPL, under warner as they wanted to take advantage of their bowling strength. Typically for international games the pitch with true bounce is used.
And it is not end of summer but rather rainy season. Due to rainy season June – September, not much cricket is possible though many local leagues start from June itself. As such pitches are generally more fresh and can act very differently tban what was seen during IPL since IPL is played in summer, around April – May. So pitches aren’t drier. But then again one can easily reduce or increase moisture by watering the pitch.
Bangalore is a batting wicket but also gives some assistance to spin as could be seen during Aus – Pak match when Marsh and Warner were slowed down by Pak spinners. The smaller dimensions of the ground make it easy to score boundaries and hence high scoring matches. By the way Bengaluru is also in peninsular India and typically has higher humidity than Hyderabad as it witnesses more rainfall than other cities, apart from Mumbai. Just that the temperature is generally not high, hence making humidity bearable.

I think what you suggested is how it is being implemented now. An umpires decision is overturned when more than 50% of ball is hitting the stumps. Anything less umpires decision stays.

I don’t get why the LBW is controversial. One can call it unlucky but there is no controversy about umpires call in DRS, unless someone just woke up after a decade. In fact if at all there was a controversial decision, personally I wouldn’t call it controversial, it was van der dussen’s LBW decision where both impact and wickets hitting were umpires call. During replays as the ball hit him on pads if I remember correctly both middle and off stumps were visible and it didn’t seem the ball spun as much to be hitting the pad around leg stump and still be clipping leg stump. I felt the ball was going with the angle because it pitched on middle stump and if it was a leg break impact should have been around middle and leg without the umpires call.

I have this line of thought that players like Maxwell and Surya Kumar Yadav need a clear mandate and context to flourish. Send them in too early and they are confused as to how they should play. Send them in with 10 or less than 10 overs and tbey know there is only one way to play and they are quite good at it when it comes off.

Every player is selfish in that they want to score runs or take wickets, just that such selfishness is not put ahead of team prospects and is always directed towards betterment of teams.

My primary issue with the article wasn’t whether Kohli tried to achieve a personal milestone or not, it was that it wasn’t at the cost of the team or putting himself before team or that it warranted such a critique with an entire article dedicated to that.

If a player is selfish at the cost of the team then it is quite right to criticise them. But it seems that you have, in your enthusiasm to write an article, ignored that fact that Kohli actually played faster, apart from the 4 singles that they didn’t run, from 70 runs onwards. In the last 2 overs that he played he scored at almost 9 runs per over while the team RR was 6 odd. So how did it impact the NRR. It basically shows you in bad light than Kohli when you write an entire article without putting things in context.

In an ideal world, this tournament would be played in the Indian “winter”, ie perhaps in February,

I was replying to the above. Indian winter is primarily from Nov to Feb but the peak months are Dec and Jan. And the orginial schedule was changed to Oct – Nov because of Covid disruption for qualifiers. This was done way back in June 2020. 2011 WC was played in Feb – Apr even when IPL was there. IPL started after the WC. If you still want to continue with your beliefs its up to you.

Indian winter is from Nov – Feb with Dec and Jan being peak months. IPL generally starts at the start of summer holidays. It starts around 23 Mar 2024. So if someone wanted to play in winter months in India it would have been between Dec and Jan for best possible conditjons. Nothing much to do with IPL. It seems like blaming IPL for everything is the easiest thing.

I don’t know why the media is too focused on the pitch. Teams should only worry about the pitch on the day of the match and select their team accordingly. I hope the team itself isn’t giving this too much importance. As many here have suggested, Aussies are trying to play India at their own game by playing more spinners. This would work when your bowlers are top quality and are able to exploit the conditions. This Indian top order is one of the weakest that has played in the last decade or more in general and specifically against spin. Apart from Rohit and Sreyas there seems to be complete lack of confidence in facing spinners. So all this talk of Indian batsmen being masters of spin bowling is completely wrong for this top order.

The trick that the Aussie team management seems to overlook is that the Indian lower order has been saving the team time and again over the last 3 to 4 years. These players, however, are very comfortable against spin. While I wouldn’t say they cannot play pace, especially on Indian pitches, they aren’t as good against pace as they are against spin in any condition. All you need is decent pace with balls directed at stumps. Any ball which can keep low or bounce more than expected is a possible wicket taking delivery. Shami has shown this amply in this series itself. So going with 2 spinners and 2 quicks with an allrounder is the way to go.

Lastly the Aussie team management has outdone our own team management with the absurd and insulting way they treated Agar. If they believed he was important for the team and capable of performing, which is what his selection for the squad indicates, he should have got a game instead of importing a rookie from Australia. Sending him back even without a game is even worse. I don’t know if they comprehend how insulting this can be for a player, especially when the player he is replaced with hasn’t done anything more than normal in the match. This can shatter the confidence of a player. Those responsible should be sacked. I don’t know if Agar is a good player or not. I didn’t see much to form an opinion. Whatever may be the case that is not the way one treats someone who is representing the nation.

Many Indian fans wonder the same. You think only Australian selectors can do a bad job 😊 .

The problem over the last 2 to 3 years has been some reforms that were bought in by the Supreme Court appointed panel after allegations of some high profile corruption scandals were made on BCCI and various state associations. One of the reforms was removing conflict of interest wherein any one having any association with BCCI cannot function in another post. Now many senior players did commentary stints or being advisors for IPL teams etc. They were now in eligible to in any other position for BCCI unless they left those roles, which no one in their right mind would do.

As such we had selection committee made up of players who played bare minimum tests and as such do not have much clout or reputation to oppose either the Captain or coach nor most probably the cricketing brains. Hence the current predicament.

I would like to add something about selection of Agar. A few have said he doesn’t have much belief or isn’t bowling well in nets. First of all bowling in nets is completely different from a match. A batsman can play very freely in the nets and smack the bowlers but out in the middle they won’t be playing the same.

I don’t know if he had belief in himself or not, but the team management essentially ensured that whatever confidence and belief Agar had would be destroyed by bringing in a similar player all the way while ignoring someone who was already in the squad. I can understand if they got some batsman to replace warner. But to bring another left arm spinner when Agar was already in the squad and didn’t even get a match is outright insult to the player. If they didn’t believe he was good enough to play they shouldn’t have selected him. And since they selected him it was attrocious to bring in a similar player without even giving Agar a chance to play.

Playing sweep isn’t as bad as it seems, but the way Aussie batsmen played it is completely wrong. A sweep shot can be played by keeping two things in mind
1. Ensure that even if you miss the ball hits your pad
2. Ensure that if it hits pad the impact is outside the line.
What I saw was a big gap between bat and pad and playing sweep shots. Hayden made huge runs by using sweep judiciously during his tours to India.

Most likely, as it seems the top orders of both teams are in a competition to see who can be worst and at present Aussies are leading the race. It’s just that our lower order is far better and the best we ever had in our entire history. While our top order did play some role in our 2 series wins in Australia, even then it 2as predominantly our lower order and bowlers who played a big part.

As Indian, in spite of the win in both tests I am a worried over the quality of our top order. I said this before the series started and say it even now, our lower middle order and bowlers have been the ones who are the main reasons for majority of our victories in the last 2 to 3 years. It is is only the even more lacklusture and unimaginative Australian batting which helped us win the two tests. Yes, Ashwin and Jadeja are very good that even Axar didn’t bowl much. However, they have shown in 1st innings and early part of 2nd innings that a bit more application and patience would have resulted in runs.
My main issue is that these huge wins are covering up the complete shambles that our top order has become. Except for Rohit, none have scored runs as they should have in the last 3 years. And 3 years is big enough time for changes to have been made but we are still playing same players except for moving Rahane out. And like many I simply don’t blame T20, though it plays some part in the way batsmen are playing, because Rohit, Axar, Jadeja and Ashwin have shown that it is not just T20 which is the cause for the shambles that the top orders of both these teams are at present.
On another note I would smack Carey on the head with a bat if he again resorts to reverse sweep before scoring a 50.

While I like the idea, I am not sure players from other nations can play in Ranji Trophy what with many thousands of Indians waiting for a chance to represent their state and then their nation. So even 1 place given to others would be one place denied to the local talent.

Probably we can create an additional team having players from associate nations and probably accomodate not more than 3 players from regular test playing nations in such team.

I was amongst the many, even though I am an Indian, who felt the preparation of the pitch (from whatever pics and information I read) was not the right thing to do.
Having said that I don’t think any wickets ghat have fallen today were because of something very different happening for left handers. So attributing Renshaws wicket to pitch preparation is not correct. The ball did as much for right handers as well and the ball to which Renshaw was out LBW didn’t do anything out of ordinary. Carey was out reverse sweeping a ball which was around his leg or middle stump. So at least in this innings the pitch behaviour was uniform for both right handers as well as left handers.

I don’t think so. And to be frank I never saw this being done till date. Hopefully, at least till now, the pitch didn’t do anything completely different on side

To be frank as an Indian I am more concerned about our own batsmens ability to play spin than pace. This is probably the worst batting line that India might have put out in the last 2 decades and certainly worst when it comes to the ability to play spin. From the days when Sehwag used to swat aside every spinner, including Muralitharan (He once said to Ashwin, after smacking him during net practice, that he didn’t consider off-spinners as bowlers at all when Ashwin asked him any tips to improve against him ☺️), laxman playing Warne inside out from the rough and against the spin, to giving 10 wickets to a guy with very little experience (Ajax Patel), we have declined greatly in the ability to play spin specifically but batting quality of the top order itself is abysmal. It was our lower order batsmen which saved us time and again in the last few years.

So I am not that confident about India sweeping this series. It looks like who plays worse will lose rather than who plays better wins. I hope I am proven wrong and everyone comes into form and we have a cracker of a series.

As an Indian, I agree with majority opinions here. I was always for full on home advantage with rank turners in India, Bouncy and pacy pitches in Australia and so on. That is what test is all about. But from the preliminary pics I have seen I am really sad as to why the curator had to do anything to this degree at all. There was simply no need. Indirectly the management is sending a signal to the team that you are not good enough to win even with normal home advantage. I hope the pitch doesn’t behave as we are expecting and turns out more even for both kind of batsmen.