Yes a four man pace attacks could be liability in Subcontinent especially with the forced change of ball after 35 over. That pretty much means no reverse swing. Tait and Lee both are capable of reversing but ICC has taken the reverse swing factor out of ODIs.
You do realise AUS have the most success record for any ODI team in India in the last decade winning all their completed ODI series right?. 1998, 2001, 2003 TVS Cup, 2006 Champions Trophy, 2007, 2009.
All those series wins where on built had strong pace attacks.
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Yeah, that's what I think should of happened, surely you have to take 2 spinners to the sub-continent?
For me one is enough. Harutiz & Dohery are ok spinners. They are no Swann & Vettori.
Regardless of the form of the pace attack currently, that is AUS strenght. So if the pacers where to struggle in IND, Harutiz & Doherty aint gonna help much.
Also with our pace attack, that is a huge risk we're going with. Having Lee, Johnson and Tait all playing could turn out to be a complete disaster as we all know how erratic they can be. I would of prefered if they took a Nannes or Stuart Clark even?
The quicks have the rest of the ODI series vs ENG to find their mojo. Mainly Tait, Bollinger, Johnson since Lee is fine again.
But yes some element of risk is present & i personally would have taken Nannes ahead of Bollinger. Not Clark however he is finished as a international cricketer.
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I can tell you I was... I loathed having Symonds in the team. He'd done jack-squat for about 6 years of international cricket up to that point - he was playing because of his fielding really, and the odd random 6 - followed by the inevitable hole out to long on. That 02/03 summer was when my admiration for Watson and hatred for Symonds hit it's peak. But of course Watson was the injury that let Symonds in.
At the time I wanted Harvey to move up to 7 (he was wasted at 8), Hogg was a good batsman at #8 so depth wasn't an issue. Or I wanted Greg Blewett instead of Symonds. Blewett's bowling was just as good in my eyes, and he was in way better form with the bat.
But it all worked out in the end...
Haha ye everyone was madd @ symonds selection. I dont think even the selectors wanted to picking, it was all down to Ponting backing his potential to go.
Sometimes thats all a players needs to click i guess, that "pat-on-the back" confidence that you can do it, even when you haven't or maybe doubting yourself. Can be worth so much runs that confidence gained from scoring a tons or runs/taking a bag of wickets in domestic cricket.
I was just checking back the 2002/03 ING performances since back then i dont remember following that domestic competition, but yea Blewett seemed to have been in good all-round form for sure.
Doherty has one good match - that's great. But he followed it with a couple of merely average ones, plus a couple of awful Tests. That's no where near enough to replace a guy who, as you said, has been quite solid in the ODI setup. 
