India v Australia: Queensland Cricket officials head to India to strengthen ties
Australian cricket officials are heading to India on a landmark trip which it is hoped will open pathways for players to gain experience playing on the sport’s toughest pitches.
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Test great Ian Healy will be part of a Queensland delegation to India this week hoping to establish a ground-breaking swap system which could demystify Australia’s greatest cricket challenge.
The group will head to the fourth Test in Ahmedabad to meet Indian Premier League champions, the Gujarat Titans, the Gujarat Cricket Association, and Indian business firms interested in spreading their tentacles into the Australian market.
If links can be established with the Gujarat IPL franchise and Gujarat Cricket Association, Queensland players could be regularly sent to India to get them for the supreme challenges of playing in India in return for Indian players or teams coming to Queensland to play club cricket or possibly train at Allan Border Field.
Queensland chief executive Terry Svenson will lead the group featuring Healy, fellow fast bowler and Queensland Cricket partnerships manager Adam Dale and Dr Ash Misra, QC’s Multicultural Project Officer.
“We see India as a natural progression for Queensland cricket teams to establish strong commercial relationships and strong cricket relationships,’’ Svenson said.
“We will look at how can we get some of our players, coaching staff, support staff and medical staff to India to learn the trade of the subcontinent. We don’t want India to be confronting for players and coaching staff when they first arrive.
“It might be some Indian players not contracted to the BCCI come out and play in the Brisbane Premier Grade competition.
“There will also be a lot of business leaders in and around the fourth Test. We are going to talk to companies about opportunities they might be wanting to launch their businesses in Queensland. How can Queensland Cricket and the Heat play a role in amplifying their business in Queensland?
“Heals is well known to the Indian cricket community. We want to make sure it’s a mutual need. It’s a fact-finding trip.’’
Australia is jubilant after beating India in the third Test in Indore on Friday but still trail 2-1 in the series and there is a feeling that the slow start in the series was due to the foreign feel of the environment which the Queensland Cricket process is trying to address.
Queensland already has some links with Indian cricket with Ash Noffke a bowling coach for the UP Warriors in the Women’s Premier League, fitness coach Paul Chapman linked with the Mumbai Indians and Andy Bichel doing assistant coaching stints with the Chennai Super Kings and the Lucknow Super Giants.
Heat allrounder Charli Knott, a rising start of Australian cricket, has, off her own bat, made arrangements to go to India in the off-season to improve her game and Queensland Cricket have decided to pay for her trip.
A growing number of Indian players are seeking Australian experience with players such as Nikhil Chaudary from Brisbane Norths playing Second XI for Queensland after moving from India for work.
MASSIVE CONSEQUENCES FOR INDIA’S ‘POOR’ PITCH
Peter Lalor
Match referee Chris Broad has slammed the Indore pitch prepared by the BCCI for the third Test match in India, rating the wicket “poor” and leaving the Holkar Stadium in danger of being banned from any Test match cricket for 12 months.
Batsmen struggled on the wicket that began to break up in the first over, but the host’s tactics of preparing raging turners backfired when Australia beat them at their own game.
Young Queensland spinner Matthew Kuhneman took five wickets and Nathan Lyon 11 for the match and the Indian batsman proved less adept at handling conditions than the Australians despite batting first.
The win by the visitor’s is only the second in 19 years by a visiting Australian side.
It guaranteed Australia a place in the World Test Championship and puts India in danger of missing out.
The BCCI’s approved curators prepare pitches.
All three matches have finished inside three days and while the first two wickets were given a sub-par “average” ranking, the Indore deck was hit with the second harshest penalty by the ICC.
Broad condemned the pitch which was prepared at the last minute after the farcical abandonment of the Dharamsala game because that venue’s outfield had been uprooted.
“The pitch, which was very dry, did not provide a balance between bat and ball, favouring spinners from the start,” Broad said.
“The fifth ball of the match broke through the pitch surface and continued to occasionally break the surface providing little or no seam movement and there was excessive and uneven bounce throughout the match.”
The Gabba received a “below average” rating after the Test against South Africa lasted just two days.
In that case curator David Sandurski admitted he’d made a mistake preparing a green seamer.
“Overall, the Gabba pitch for this Test match was too much in favour of the bowlers,” match referee Richie Richardson said at the time.
“There was extra bounce and occasional excessive seam movement. The odd delivery also kept low on the second day, making it very difficult for batters to build partnerships.
“I found the pitch to be “below average” as per the ICC guidelines since it was not an even contest between bat and ball.”
Both captains in the Border Gavaskar Test at Indore deflected criticism of the pitch.
Steve Smith said he enjoyed the battle as a batsman despite no batsman passing 60 in the match.
“All the wickets have spun, we haven’t gotten past three days yet so that shows that it’s been spinning from day one in all the test matches but I personally I really enjoyed playing on these kind of wickets,” the acting captain said.
“I prefer this than just a genuine flat wicket that goes five days and can be boring in stages. There’s always something happening on these wickets. You’ve got to really work hard for your runs. But it’s showed that the guys can do it. Guys can do it, you’ve got to work hard for them and you need some luck. With this one, whether it might have been a little bit too extreme, potentially from the first ball. I’m not really entirely sure, but it was still another enjoyable.”
The Indian media has been relentless in its question of the wicket, but captain Rohit Sharma pushed back in the post match press conference.
The Indian opening batsman admitted there was a conscious decision to prepare turning wickets.
Before a series starts, you have to decide on what pitches you need to play,” he said.
“It was our call to play on such pitches. We knew that we could face challenges as well but we were ready for these challenges.”
Indian Captain Rohit Sharma talking about on Indore pitch. pic.twitter.com/q8l4L8HbHE
— CricketMAN2 (@ImTanujSingh) March 3, 2023
Sharma said few matches went the distance in Test cricket.
“People have to play well for the game to last for five days,” he said. :Games are not lasting for five days even outside India. Yesterday in South Africa the game got over inside three days. Australia as well in the first Test match. It’s about skills. It’s not about playing on flat pitches and the results don’t come. In Pakistan there were three Test matches played, people said ‘it’s become so boring’, so we are making it interesting for you guys.”
Sharma hit back at the relentless questioning about he wickets in the first three Tests.
“This pitch talk is getting too much,” he said. “Every time we play in India, it’s always about the pitch. Why are we not talking about Nathan Lyon? how well he bowled, how well Pujara batted in the second innings, how well Usman Khawaja played. Those are the things if you ask me I can give the details of, not the pitch. We focus too much on the pitch here in India and I feel that’s not necessary.”
Former India great Sunil Gavaskar was not fond of the wicket, but said the batting was poor.
“Of all the three Tests, this was the worst pitch. Any batter would have struggled to score big on this pitch. Having said that, if the batters had showed some composure and tried to stitch together partnerships of even 50-odd runs, then maybe the hosts could have won this Test as well,” Gavaskar told India Today.
BCCI now have 14 days if they wish to appeal against the sanction
CRASH: INDIA ‘GOT WHAT IT DESERVED’ FOR PITCH DOCTORING FARCE
- Robert Craddock
Has Australia found its counter punch to Bazball?
Will Australia throw a cavalier Travis Head in the face of England’s crafty opening bowlers Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson and a new Dukes ball which may swing like a soap sud?
Or do they play him down the order given that, as Michael Vaughan says, the Dukes ball tends to stop swinging after 30 overs giving middle order cavaliers like Head the chance to unleash their bayonets?
This is one of the biggest questions facing Australia in this year’s Ashes series against a revitalised England team committed to playing gung ho cricket.
Bring it on!
Head’s short, sharp and spectacular decimation of India’s stunned spin attack in Australia’s stunning win over India in Indore has given his side some Ashes options and they are welcome ones at that.
What a turnaround. All things considered, Australia’s Test win was one of its finest wins — anywhere — and it came against an Indian set-up which got what it deserved for shameless pitch doctoring.
The challenges confronting Australia were immense, ugly and intimidating - and everywhere.
Four players in the original Australian squad had returned home. India had lost just two of their last 44 home Tests and were 2-0 up in the series.
Australia lost the toss for the first time in nine Tests and batted second on a crumbling deck.
They started the Test neck deep in quicksand. There was no logical way Australia could win this Test - but they did.
It was a superb performance against all of the supreme challenges an Indian tour can throw at you, particularly a doctored wicket left so dry and cracked it ended up nullifying the spinning edge India had in the first two Tests.
Steve Smith did a wonderful job as captain and Nathan Lyon deserves immense credit for his eight wicket second innings haul.
Lyon once told a story about a Test in England where he put a recording of rain on a tin roof overnight to relax him for a major bowling assignment.
He used to acutely feel the pressure of being “the man’’ in the final innings and early in his career he struggled in Asia. But he has grown and learnt and improved.
India never mention him as a major threat yet he has dismissed Cheteshwar Pujara 13 times in Tests, Rohit Sharma eight and Virat Kohli seven and, as documented by Code Sports, is just one wicket behind the great English left-arm spinner Derek Underwood as the most successful touring Test bowler in India.
This is a dam-busting statistic.
Surprisingly, overseas spinners often find touring India tough work and even the legends Muttiah Muralidharan and Shane Warne averaged mid-40s per wicket there.
Young tweakers Matt Kuhnemann and Todd Murphy also deserve credit for holding their line and nerve under the pressure so great that every conceded boundary seemed to be worth three times what it would be on another day when runs were easier to come by.
The young duo have played just 22 first class games between them yet you wouldn’t know it. When Australia last won a series here in 2004, Kuhnemann was seven year old and Murphy three.
They have grown up witnessing nothing more than heartache for Australia in Indian conditions.
Young players thrown into Test cricket can fade throughout a series. This duo seemed to become stronger.
They are made of strong stuff and could only have helped their cause to have the understated New Zealand left-armed spinning great Dan Vettori in their corner as Australia’s assistant coach.
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Originally published as India v Australia: Queensland Cricket officials head to India to strengthen ties
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