*Official* India Tour of Australia 2018/19

[Spark]

It's not controversial. No one's disagreeing with it, at all.



You've lost me

see big bambino's post on the last page

 

[OverratedSanity]

i'm honestly surprised that this idea that india had good plans and executed them extremely well is proving controversial; this is exactly what australia has done to opposition batting lineups in australia for years and years now, and what made clarke's australia so utterly dominant at home even with a weak team.

I guess I'm actually really surprised they stuck to their plans. I'm used to Dhoni setting a 7-2 legside field and telling the bowlers to bowl 5 bouncers an over.

 

[the big bambino]

both can be true tbf. mostly i'm just objecting to the idea that you can put fast bowlers in who wouldn't make a sheffield shield team and somehow expect to win test matches

Yeah i reckon we're going around in circles here

Yep.

 

[TheJediBrah]

I think the Indians were clearly superior to a standard Shield attack

 

[social]

Despite the Australian batting lineup being terrible, would it be controversial to say that India's pacers thoroughly outbowled Australia's? I really never thought that would happen. The batting was still obviously the bigger problem and part of the reason Australia's bowlers looked worse is because they often didn't have runs on the board, but starc and Hazelwood just looked pretty mediocre all series and they often wasted the new ball with wayward spells. Even on the occasions the Indian bowlers were unpenetrative there never seemed to be passages where the were too inaccurate giving away easy runs like Starc sometimes did.

Fair enough

Bumrah & Shami were excellent but I suspect that they knew Ishant was bog average and dropped him

Cummins was very good for 3 tests but looked buggered in Sydney

Hazelwood was average while Starc was ordinary

If the world was fair, Tremain would replace Starc

I suspect that they are thinking about Richardson, Behrendorff and Stanlake but will give Starc another chance

 

[Spark]

I guess I'm actually really surprised they stuck to their plans. I'm used to Dhoni setting a 7-2 legside field and telling the bowlers to bowl 5 bouncers an over.

i'm strongly convinced that had dhoni captained this tour india would not have won a single test match. i reckon they would have lost adelaide by a margin and perth by a big margin, and that would have ensured that mcg was a much more even contest even with pujara.

 

[quincywagstaff]

Australia has become England of the mid-80s in that they can win the Ashes but very little else. Last summer's Ashes is the only series they've won out of their last six. In fact they've only won two Test series in almost three years.

 

[the big bambino]

If it came to that then I'd go Richardson. Not to sure about Tremain. Would they trust Dorff or Stanlake over 5 days?

 

[OverratedSanity]

Fair enough

Bumrah & Shami were excellent but I suspect that they knew Ishant was bog average and dropped him

Thoroughly disagree with that, thought Ishant was very good, except at Melbourne where he didn't look fully fit at all. Still didn't give much away even in that game.

 

[NotMcKenzie]

Despite the Australian batting lineup being terrible, would it be controversial to say that India's pacers thoroughly outbowled Australia's?.

No, I completely agree. I said something towards this earlier:

- I thought that our bowling efforts looked listless and lifeless. Even in Perth, I thought India's bowling (perhaps apart from Yadav) looked better than ours for the following reasons. We usually seemed to have no plans to bowl to the Indian batsmen, whether by blocking scoring shots or in exploiting vulnerable strokes. And when we did try something—bowling short in Sydney—we apparently (having no seen that day myself) overdid it, as if we had nothing to fall back upon when that plan didn't work.
Our strategy seemed to be 'bowl good', and a lot of the time, our bowlers looked as if they were simply going through the motions without interest or thought or effort.

By way of comparison, I'm implying India did do these things correctly

 

[silentstriker]

India would’ve won this series with their attack then.

LOL those fast bowlers wouldn’t make one of the 28 Indian first class side these days...

 

[TheJediBrah]

Australia has become England of the mid-80s in that they can win the Ashes but very little else. Last summer's Ashes is the only series they've won out of their last six. In fact they've only won two Test series in almost three years.

being a mid-tier team and refusing to play minnows will do that I guess

 

[the big bambino]

LOL those fast bowlers wouldn’t make one of the 28 Indian first class side these days...

Please. One misunderstanding at a time.

 

[Starfighter]

With respect to Spark and TJB's revolving argument, I think there is a lot to the batting writing their own demise. Yes the bowling was very disciplined but it was also the same old story of being able to rotate the strike and relying on boundaries, particularly from Khawaja who just seems to spend all his time marooned at one end. Even when the Indian batsmen were encountering difficulties Pujara always seemed to be getting something, and he's not a brilliant runner between the wickets. As I pointed out earlier is a thing deeper than just this team, the Shield seems to be full of these average 35 with a strike rate of 60 batsmen who rely on boundaries and can't rotate the strike, and the English have a lot of the same type of batsmen (such as Vince). They always play hard shots straight to fielders and can't work it into gaps, and try too many low-percentage shots. With Warner we'd have had a player much better at being aggressive and better between wickets, and with Smith a much better worker of the ball. There's no way he'd have let Ashwin settle into the rhythm he did and with all due respect to Spark's point about the Indian pace bowling it was Ashwin who did the damage in the first innings in Adelaide, as batsmen let him settle then got out to him, when he should have with good footwork been nudged for a couple every over.

 

[NotMcKenzie]

refusing to play minnows

An indication of our team and board's noble, self-sacrificing character

 

[quincywagstaff]

tbh I think Cummins series bowling has been overrated a bit. He was great in Melbourne but I think he was no more than solid in the first two Tests as I think he got into the habit of pitching it short of a length or bounces too often which gets the crowd and comes excited but doesn't lead to wickets that often, as his stars showed.

 

[OverratedSanity]

being a mid-tier team and refusing to play minnows will do that I guess

You guys couldn't even beat Bangladesh away ffs. Then again neither could India so it's forgivable.

 

[Spark]

You guys couldn't even beat Bangladesh away ffs. Then again neither could India so it's forgivable.

i really think "couldn't beat bangladesh in bangladesh" should have long since stopped being a sledge. they're a legit team at home.

 

[Spark]

With respect to Spark and TJB's revolving argument, I think there is a lot to the batting writing their own demise. Yes the bowling was very disciplined but it was also the same old story of being able to rotate the strike and relying on boundaries, particularly from Khawaja who just seems to spend all his time marooned at one end. Even when the Indian batsmen were encountering difficulties Pujara always seemed to be getting something, and he's not a brilliant runner between the wickets. As I pointed out earlier is a thing deeper than just this team, the Shield seems to be full of these average 35 with a strike rate of 60 batsmen who rely on boundaries and can't rotate the strike, and the English have a lot of the same type of batsmen (such as Vince). They always play hard shots straight to fielders and can't work it into gaps, and try too many low-percentage shots. With Warner we'd have had a player much better at being aggressive and better between wickets, and with Smith a much better worker of the ball. There's no way he'd have let Ashwin settle into the rhythm he did and with all due respect to Spark's point about the Indian pace bowling it was Ashwin who did the damage in the first innings in Adelaide, as batsmen let him settle then got out to him, when he should have with good footwork been nudged for a couple every over.

i still think it was bumrah who was the key man at adelaide

 

[Starfighter]

being a mid-tier team and refusing to play minnows will do that I guess

I think there's more to refusing to play minnows that drags the team down than just a bad attitude. something like the cancelled series against Bangladesh, presumably played on fairly dry wickets in Darwin and Cairns or Townsville would have given our batsmen valuable time against a fairly good spin dominated attack which would hopefully help them learn to construct innings against such bowling which is rarely seen here. While learning to work spinners is something that really should be learnt in grade cricket in your teens some experience is better than none.