Legendary Indian batter Sunil Gavaskar has lamented the decision taken by Team India to cancel a scheduled practice match in Australia between the senior team and India A. In fact, India’s senior team are not scheduled to play a single warm-up game in Australia before they set off on a five-Test Border-Gavaskar Trophy series. Following India’s poor batting display in the recently-concluded home series against New Zealand, Gavaskar has called for common sense to prevail, and for some warm-up matches to be put in place for the India players.

In the spin-friendly conditions in India, the batters struggled against New Zealand, crossing a total of 300 just once in the entire Test series. With Australia posing a completely different challenge, in the form of fast, bouncy pitches, Gavaskar believes that warm-up games are a must.

In particular, out-of-form batters like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, and new inductees into the side like Yashasvi Jaiswal and Sarfaraz Khan, could benefit from it.

“Australia can be salvaged because the pitches there are beautiful to bat on after the first dozen overs or so, after which the ball hardly deviates off the surface. To do that, though, the team needs to play a bit more on those kinds of pitches. Instead, we are now told that the warm-up game before the first Test has been called off. Wouldn’t it benefit youngsters like (Yashasvi) Jaiswal and Sarfaraz (Khan), who are playing on Australian pitches for the first time, to get some runs under their belt and get a feel of what the pitches will be like?” wrote Gavaskar, in his column for Sportstar.

“And if they get out early, they can still get into the nets and practice against the throwdown specialist or the net bowlers. For bowlers like Akash Deep and Harshit Rana too, it’s essential to know the best length to bowl in Australia, as it’s different from India, and the best learning is in a proper match and not just net practice,” Gavaskar added.

Eight players in India’s squad for the first Test against Australia — Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sarfaraz Khan, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Dhruv Jurel, Nitish Reddy, Harshit Rana, Akash Deep and Prasidh Krishna — have never played a senior Test match in Australia.

“Let’s just hope that good sense prevails, and even now, though it’s too late, some warm-up games can be arranged, even if it’s against the State A teams like Queensland A and Victoria A. These warm-up games will give the first-timers to Australia and youngsters good practice and a better chance to succeed,” Gavaskar added.

File photo of KL Rahul.© AFP