India's tour of Australia - December/January 2015

[shravi]

very proud of 2-0, as bad as that sounds. scoreline could be very different, but test cricket is about very fine margins and winning those crucial sessions, and to be fair, australia won all of those. however, many encouraging signs going forward with vijay, kohli and rahane. i hope we persist with aaron. he leaks a lot of runs, but there is a lot to work with there, more so than umesh yadav imo. yadav was very disappointing and i don't recall any spells in which he actually bowled decently. virtually all his wickets were pure luck. ishant, well... not much to say here... i don't even know what to say anymore actually.

ashwin bowled better this time around. however, he needs to learn to contain better. offspiners are not generally so expensive, but ashwin was smashed to all parts despite taking important wickets. there's noone to replace him and he's done enough to suggest that things will get better though.

 

[Aalay]

It could have been easily 4-0 but we managed 2-0, so fair result. I also hope that is Raina's last test and we leave him to shorter formats for good. We have enough batsmen in domestic cricket and we don't need Raina at test level. Fast bowlers were clearly the difference between both the teams. Even guys like Hazlewood and Starc who are not very experienced at the test level, bowled with incredible discipline. Ishant Sharma has played almost 60 test matches but I have never seen him bowl like that as Hazlewood did only after 2 tests. I was really excited with our bowling attack this time around but it was a huge disappointment. Ashwin definitely showed signs of improvement and that was the only positive for me in the bowling department. However, until we don't find bowlers who are disciplined enough to get us 20 wickets, we have no chance of winning a series overseas.

 

[abhi_jacko]

Some very good positives from the series - batting department especially. And Ashwin

But the bowling performance has raised some major concerns. We will be playing the World Cup on similar wickets with the same bowling lineup almost. Bowlers need to find some sort of form soon

 

[abhi_jacko]

It could have been easily 4-0 but we managed 2-0, so fair result.

Well said. All these complains about supposed "flat tracks" are unwarranted. The draw yesterday went right down the wire. Even in the 3rd test, it was very close. And this was actually a more all round display of cricketing skills. You got to see some lethal spin bowling as well as some dangerous reverse swing besides good old fast bowling. And if the wickets were this flat, Aussies wouldnt have been 200-250/6 multiple times in the series only to be rescued by Smith and lower order. Unless the Australian top order is that brittle ?

 

[_Sam_]

To be honest I think the flatter nature of the wickets is undeniable by those stats channel 9 brought up in the first session, however that's not to say the games haven't ended interestingly.

 

[Jagar]

Well said. All these complains about supposed "flat tracks" are unwarranted. The draw yesterday went right down the wire. Even in the 3rd test, it was very close. And this was actually a more all round display of cricketing skills. You got to see some lethal spin bowling as well as some dangerous reverse swing besides good old fast bowling. And if the wickets were this flat, Aussies wouldnt have been 200-250/6 multiple times in the series only to be rescued by Smith and lower order. Unless the Australian top order is that brittle ?

A big part of the close results in these tests has been sporting declarations and good sportsmanship from both sides captains going for the win.

The Australian top order is very brittle, and has been for quite some time. Can recall lot of tests where our innings have been saved by the lower order and genuine tail enders making big scores. Before this series batting collapses haven't been too uncommon for Australia, often relying almost entirely on Clarke to get a big score to keep us competitive. The fact that the Australian tail enders were able to score runs so easily shows that these pitches were stacked towards batting.

I'm not sure if it was even flatness that was the issue, or just lack of variety. As I understand it Cricket Australia now uses drop in pitches, which seems to have resulted in very similar pitches in all of the tests.

 

[SaiSrini]

Finally, the series is over! A 2-0 result looks much better than the 4-0 we had last time around here in Australia. First things first - this series had horrible, absolutely horrible pitches. The pitches in England in our recent 3-1 disaster were much better. Probably Australia knows that in order to blunt our bowling attack, preparing such pitches are the best way to go (they do not want us to sneak in a victory like we did at Lord's), but these pitches were so un-Australian and made the series so boring to watch. Yes, the Aussie bowlers bowled better on them and got two wins, but on a series perspective, you want more sporting wickets.

Very encouraged by the performance of the Indian batsmen. I know the pitches here helped them by not having much of movement, but still against Australia's bowlers in their own conditions, this was a spectacular performance by the batsmen. Vijay, Kohli, Rahane and Rahul have given us a lot to expect in the coming years. Kohli with his captaincy cannot be rated properly as he was stand-in captain for this series (this was a Dhoni series though Dhoni captained only two tests).

From the bowling perspective, Ashwin just had a drastic jump upwards from his earlier performances overseas. Wonder what would happen if the guy had some more support from the other end. He is still a work in progress, but the improvement he has shown from last time is tremendous. Can't avoid getting into ifs and buts, but if Ashwin had played at Adelaide, maybe the result could have been different there. The rest of the bowlers were mediocre to poor. Shami can be persisted as he was wayward but did bowl the occasional good spells. Ishant bowled really well in the first two tests but then tapered off into his usual territory. It was Yadav that was the most disappointing. Even in his last tour here, he took wickets but leaked lot of runs. And he has not learnt anything. Maybe its time to move past him.

 

[grkrama]

i think the difference is waca was not one of the venues, all the other pitches adelaide. MCG, SCG have always been good tracks that favor batsman the first 3 days, only gaba and perth favor bowlers from day one/two and are faster than other pitches.

all the pitches have played as usual nothing different much. look at 2003 tour was pretty similar

 

[SaiSrini]

Some very good positives from the series - batting department especially. And Ashwin

But the bowling performance has raised some major concerns. We will be playing the World Cup on similar wickets with the same bowling lineup almost. Bowlers need to find some sort of form soon

Being optimistic here - I think India feel a lot more comfortable in ODI's where you do not have to bat time and where you have the scoreboard/overs pressure. Bowlers like Bhuvi become a lot more effective under such circumstances.

 

[Satan666]

India have not been able to win any of their last 7 test matches.

Latest ICC rankings have India at #7.

No Indian batsman ranks in the top 10 test.

No Indian bowler ranks in the top 10 test.

R. Ashwin at #3 in test allrounders.

 

[Epic]

I wouldn't worry too much about the rankings given we just went on a run of nothing but overseas tours starting with South Africa a little over a year ago and thus have nothing but home/tours within the Asia going forward in the next 2-3 years, that alone will see us reach at least top 4 when we do make a run back at these overseas tours 3/4 years from now and hopefully having a more settled side to make a go of it then.

On this series, our batting stood up again after a little blimp in England, but for the most part our batting has held up in these recent overseas tours barring the few Tests in England, our bowling is hanging in there purely by Ashwin, the rest of the attack comprised of pacers were thoroughly dreadful and almost every wicket was from a false shot out of nowhere and not a false shot on the back of pressure and deliveries beating the bat, they just never look in positions to take 20 wickets unless given a green top by the opposition like at Lord's. The scoreline simply doesn't matter to me as it was a team in transition out there, but to keep it to just 2-0 down really without a bowling attack is admirable to say the least.

 

[Aoun13]

Excellent series and Kohli looks like another great captain in making. Although he needs to tone down his aggression (other then in his batting style) which some time looks childish. Ponting is pretty good example of how a balanced aggressive captain should be.
I agree that pitches were so different from what we usually see in Australia but thanks to both captains that results were so close rather then those boring draws.

 

[War]

Been a bit awol on this forum, but i watched most of this series and i think this Brettig cricinfo articles summed up my thoughts best Australia 2, India 0, Pitches 4 | Cricket Features | Australia v India | ESPN Cricinfo - no doubt IND batted well & I personally have always thought highly of Kohli & Rahane all year due as test players - but the pitches were very flat. Arguably the flattest pitches seen in a AUS summer since the 2003/04 summer.

Credit to AUS bowlers who even in the two drawn test basically were in positions to win despite this.

Not sure what AUS does with Watson going forward. Big fan of his, but of course its reaching a point (if not passed it already where he needs more consistency with the bat) especially with M Marsh now around.

 

[grkrama]

to all those saying pitches have become flat or what not this is how SCG has always been

check these two matches, its always bat big and then hope you scittle oppositon on final day

2nd Test: Australia v India at Sydney, Jan 2-6, 2008 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo



4th Test: Australia v India at Sydney, Jan 2-6, 2004 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo

463
523
705
474

this are the first innings score at scg when ind toured aus the last 2 times, i dont know where this mythical bowler friendly scg pitch exits.

also these were with much better attacks on both sides.

adelaide too has always been batting friendly, only mcg was slightly not the usual self, gabba was pretty much the same.

 

[SaiSrini]

@grkarma: Even Brisbane was pretty flat (i.e. good for batting). Normally Brisbane is a pretty good wicket for fast bowlers. But it was not so this time.