Winning a series doesn,t mean australia are a better test team than india

[MWaugh]

sohummisra, i didnt realise this topic had been discussed before and i can see where your coming from on many of your points. on your first comment regarding warne you stated that he only took his first 5 wicket hall THIS series. i think that in itself shows that the greatest legspinner of all time had himself worked out the indians. while he has undoubtably not had the most enjoyable times of his life against india, he has become a far more thinking bowler in recent years and has begun to turn the ball less and try and think the batsmen out. as for clarke on the paddock, im not sure that india played a whole lot differently to him considering he did take 4 for and they were playing to win a test match.
as for your theory on the stupid australians playing fast bowlers on spin friendly wickets i think this technique worked a charm. who had the wood on dravid for much of the series? kasper i think --- fast bowler. i think he also had dravids measure. i think the 3 pronged pace attack took the indians a little bit by surprise as they were expecting warne to bowl the majority of their overs. like singh and kumble for india. the way australia played and were led by gilchrist with different strategies to the steve waugh attempts of the past show the ultimate professional nature of australian cricket and the system that has allowed them to take almost every trophy on offer. i think the australian team deserves a lot more credit than india just having a bad series. all 11 of them as the case may be.

 

[sohum]

Anyhow... credit is definitely given to Australia for pulling off the series victory in India.

I did not say that Australia did not deserve credit for getting the series victory. They finally realized that they had to crack India in a different way and they did. You have misunderstood me on the point of the Aussie bowlers on the Indian pitch. I did not say that the Australians were stupid to bowl their pace bowlers. I said that it would have been stupid had they bowled mainly pace on the spin-friendly Indian pitches.

Pace bowling is their understood strength in cricket so they went in with three pace bowlers every time. They still gave a large quantity of overs to their spin-bowlers (Warne, Katich, Lehmann, Hauritz, Clarke). In fact, their spin bowlers bowled a total of 188 overs compared to 381 from the pace bowlers. This is a ratio of 1:2, meaning that about 1/3 of the overs were bowled by spinners whereas there was usually just 1 regular spinner in a given side.

Having said that, the Australians still got more wickets with their pace bowlers, simply because that is their strength. But they did not necessarily over-bowl them. The point I'm trying to make here is that the Aussies were smart enough to bowl their pace bowlers in short spells (rotating them) and giving the spinner one end most of the time. Their strategy was right on the dot. That is what gave them the win. Another major factor was their field setting. India is an aggressive batting team and the Aussies countered this by setting mainly defensive fields. Indians got frustrated and got out.

And finally, probably the most important reason of all, was Parthiv Patel. The guy gave every Aussie batsmen a chance in every match (perhaps even every innings). I think that made a huge difference in many of the mini-outcomes of the series. That said, the Aussies are clearly the best team in the world (no one should even attempt to disprove that), although other teams are closer to them in the ODI version of the game.

 

[cornjoelio]

lol its funny that this is still going.
The scorebooks are closed. The rankings are correct
see ya in 06.

 

[angryangy]

Pace bowling is their understood strength in cricket so they went in with three pace bowlers every time. They still gave a large quantity of overs to their spin-bowlers (Warne, Katich, Lehmann, Hauritz, Clarke). In fact, their spin bowlers bowled a total of 188 overs compared to 381 from the pace bowlers. This is a ratio of 1:2, meaning that about 1/3 of the overs were bowled by spinners whereas there was usually just 1 regular spinner in a given side.

Having said that, the Australians still got more wickets with their pace bowlers, simply because that is their strength. But they did not necessarily over-bowl them. The point I'm trying to make here is that the Aussies were smart enough to bowl their pace bowlers in short spells (rotating them) and giving the spinner one end most of the time. Their strategy was right on the dot. That is what gave them the win. Another major factor was their field setting. India is an aggressive batting team and the Aussies countered this by setting mainly defensive fields. Indians got frustrated and got out.

Mind you, the Australian pacemen made sure to use full advantage of their slower balls and cutters, (of which Kasprowicz is a notable practitioner) which, as we know, are virtually a form of spin.