The former Aussie legend Ian Chappell says the Australian team need to adapt quickly to the Indian conditions and stay away from all the pitch-doctoring chatter to stay alive in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Test series. Chappell’s comment come on the back of Australia’s humiliating innings defeat in the first Test in Nagpur, where the visitors folded for a miserly 91 in their second innings. In his latest column for ESPNcricinfo, Chappell also wrote about Australia’s selection in the first Test – especially the omission of Travis Head. Ian found benching Head hard to fathom, and termed off-spinner Todd Murphy’s selection, who took seven wickets on debut, as brave.
The ex-Aussie skipper called the media chatter about Nagpur’s ‘doctored pitch’ as noise, and suggested the players must steer clear of it or it could have ‘debilitating effect on the visiting team.’
Chappell also wrote the touring players know what they should expect while coming to India but warned that the Indian pacers are also not without skill.
Writing about the Nagpur pitch, Chappell concluded it was nothing but a fairly typical Indian red soil pitch and wasn’t impossible to play on. He mentioned the Indian skipper Rohit Sharma’s brilliant century to put things into perspective, and mentioned about how Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne batted during the first session on day one.
“The state of the pitch was put into perspective by the Indian captain Rohit Sharma. He played a masterful innings that displayed confidence in his own defence, his wide stroke range on a turning – but not impossible pitch – and his ironclad discipline. Rohit’s confidence in his defence was crucial. If a player doesn’t trust his defence on Indian pitches he can easily be panicked into trying to do something that he’s not capable of, and this ends up in an embarrassing dismissal,” Chappell wrote in his column.
Australia now will be looking to bounce back after losing the first Test by an innings and 132 runs. The Kangaroos will also be wary of Ravindra Jadeja and Ravi Ashwin, both of whom took five-wicket hauls in Australia’s first and second innings, respectively. The second Test of the four-match series is set to start in Delhi from February 17.
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