Indian team has won the last two Test series in Australia—2018-19 and 2020-21—but former Australian coach John Buchanan thinks it will be tough for the India to adjust at first, especially since they won’t have enough practice games.
“I never make predictions, but I would just say that Australia is favoured going into the series right at this stage. When you look around world cricket these days, and it has been for some time, it’s very difficult to tour other countries, and the reason for that is the travelling teams no longer have that preparation in a country (they are visiting),” Buchanan said in a recent event.
“Both the sides, in a sense, are pretty evenly balanced, with good strong bowling line-ups, but I favour the Australian bowling line-up if I had to compare them. India has good strong batting line-ups, but possibly I would still favour the Australian batting line-up a little bit at this point in time, but just as you go into the series, it’s evenly balanced…” he added.
Buchanan believes that the lack of practice games will affect the series, but he acknowledges that with busy schedules, it’s hard to fit in more practice matches while touring.
He then said that this means India have to cut back on many T20 and T10 leagues, but that won’t happen. Plus, players don’t want long tours anymore; they prefer to have more time for other tournaments. So, that’s unlikely to change.
“It’s decisions from the administrators that are key in factoring formats. I think there needs to be a place for the transition game between playing really short format games and the longer format because you need to understand going back to just adjustment and adapting. You need to be able to work out how to adapt your game, bowl or bat, field or whatever, from a really short game to a longer game” he said.
While Buchanan isn’t in favor of Steve Smith opening for Australia, he believes that David Warner’s recent retirement from international cricket won’t hurt the team as he wasn’t performing well for the past 18 months.
