Tour of Australia: More questions than answers as men blue pack their bags for down under

The mood in the Indian camp, on the eve of their departure for the five-Test Australia series, is not quite upbeat as they are still trying to pick up the pieces after the 3-0 whitewash last Sunday. The squad will be leaving in two batches on Sunday-Monday, albeit without captain Rohit Sharma, who is likely to miss the first Test in Perth from 22 November for personal reasons.

The unexpected humiliation at the hands of the Kiwis at home has left all shellshocked – with the past week seeing head coach Gautam Gambhir’s strategy coming in for a severe criticism and the ‘Big Two’ under scrutiny for their string of failures in red call cricket. While a dip in form, that too in a particular format, is nothing uncommon with the finest of batters – what’s galling is neither the captain nor Virat Kohli has shown the humility to reboot their skills with some game time in domestic cricket.

Under such circumstances, what attracted a lot of media speculation was an exhaustive meeting on Friday between the skipper, chairman of selectors Ajit Agarkar, BCCI secretary and president Jay Shah and Roger Binny, respectively with Gambhir joining the meeting online. While no official comment on the contents of the review meeting is not available, the buzz is strong questions were asked about certain decisions of the team management which backfired on them – namely the insistence on providing another rank turner in Mumbai even after the Pune debacle.

A PTI report says that the decision of resting vice-captain Jasprit Bumrah for the Mumbai Test was an ill-conceived one while the selection of young paceman Harshit Rana and T20 specialist Nitish Reddy – both with limited red ball exposure – also figured in the talks. The report quotes an unnamed senior BCCI official as follows: ‘’It was a six hour marathon meeting which was obviously on cards after such a debacle. India are going on a tour of Australia and the BCCI would obviously like to ensure that the team is back on track and would like to know how the think-tank are going about it.’’

The drift from BCCI sources is that all parties were keen on a ‘course correction’ during the demanding tour of Australia, especially since they managed to script history on both their previous visits. After being well poised to make the World Test Championship (WTC) final for the third time on the trot, India’s chances have now received a body blow after the defeat to the Kiwis and they must now beat the Aussies 4-0 to qualify on their own steam.

A projection, which looks impossible under the circumstances while the preparation of the side for such a major tour, has already come up for criticism.  A warm-up match, originally planned between the national team and the touring India A side there to provide some valuable match practice, has now been called off.       

Explaining the rationale behind preferring extended practice sessions ahead of a simulated game, Rohit said after the Mumbai defeat: “We are travelling with a squad of 19 players and only three days were allotted to us. I don’t know how much workload we can get in those three days in terms of getting everyone prepared. The management feels that we’d rather have a match simulation where batters can spend more time in the middle and the bowlers can bowl a lot of balls. That is something that we as a team feel more comfortable doing rather than playing a practice game because game time is not a problem.”

Jurel makes his case

The batting woes, meanwhile, has given enough warning signals. If the team management had been pinning their hopes on seasoned pro K.L. Rahul (already in Australia as a part of the India A team) to open the innings in the first Test in Perth in case of Rohit’s absence, the former has not looked in his best nick in the ongoing Test between the ‘A’ sides. Dhruv Jurel, the keeper-batter who was also added to the A team, outshone him with resolute efforts of 80 and 68 in either innings and could be pushing for a place in the middle order purely as a batter.

However, the team management may still prefer Rahul’s experience in the playing XI in the light of the confidence crisis in both Rohit and Kohli. The Bangalorean remains one of the only two Asian openers to have a century in the format in the SENA countries (England, South Africa and Australia), albeit with a not-so-good batting figure at the position — 2551 runs in 75 innings at 34.94.

 There are serious questions about the number three and five batting positions, where a certain Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Raha held forth with courage and remarkable discipline in the two past series wins. Pujara’s contribution as a No.3 has been widely acknowledged by those in the rival camp like Pat Cummins and it would be an acid test for Shubman Gill to show he has what it takes to fill in his shoes!