Novices on notice as India look to bounce back from 36 all out

India are set to name at least one debutant to face Australia as they look for a response from a historic humiliation.

New India captain Ajinkya Rahane chats with coach Ravi Shastri in Melbourne. Picture: AFP

India are set to name at least one debutant for the Boxing Day Test against Australia as they look to bounce back from the humiliation of being bowled out for 36 in the first Test.

The touring side will be without their star batsman and captain Virat Kohli, who has flown home for the birth of his first child, and Mohammed Shami, who broke his arm during India’s second-innings collapse.

It means that Mohammed Siraj or Navdeep Saini are likely to come into their seam attack. Siraj, 26, has taken 152 first-class wickets at an average of 23.44 as a brisk right-arm swing bowler with a menacing bouncer. Saini, 28, has pace and has 17 appearances for India in one-day cricket.

The match will take place in front of a reduced crowd of about 30,000 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground – just under a third of its usual capacity.

Ajinkya Rahane takes on the role of captain in the absence of Kohli and has the unenviable task of trying to lift the team after their batting calamity in Adelaide.

As many England teams can attest, it is inordinately difficult to come back from a deficit in Australia and Rahane faces a challenge to keep his team competitive for the rest of the four-match series.

David Warner and Sean Abbott have been prevented from rejoining the Australia squad because of an outbreak of Covid-19 in Sydney, where the pair had been recovering from injuries.

Australian skipper Tim Paine in the nets ahead of the Boxing Day Test. Picture: Getty Images

Warner, 34, would not have been fit enough to play in Melbourne having sustained a groin injury during the ODI series last month.

Meanwhile England players who returned from the recent tour to South Africa will still be allowed to travel to Sri Lanka for the Test series next month, even though the government said on Wednesday that anyone who had been in South Africa in the past two weeks would need to isolate because a new variant of the coronavirus had been discovered there.

The quarantine requirement does not apply in this case because the players and coaches, who returned from the curtailed limited-overs series two weeks ago on Thursday, have been subject to a rigorous testing regime under the government’s guidance for elite sport.

The Times