The Border-Gavaskar Trophy has increased significantly in importance for India ever since their series defeat against New Zealand. The men in blue need to be at the top of their game and win at least three out of the five Test matches due to be played during the tour. Although Rohit Sharma’s men are on a three-year winning streak in Australia, the stakes are higher than ever with India’s World Test Championship (WTC) final chances hinging on how they perform down under.
For warming up before the big series, India had earlier opted to play a three-day intra-squad game against India A at the Western Australian Cricket Association (WACA) Stadium in Perth before the start of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy on November 22. The unofficial match which was to be played behind closed doors between Nov 15-17 would have been India’s only warm-up game for the tour.
The visitors were also given a choice to stage a similar game against Australia’s domestic side, something they had done on the last two red-ball tours in Australia, India preferred the Intra-squad game. During the 2020-21 Border-Gavaskar Trophy, India’s main team played a three-match game against Australia A before the five-match series began. Similarly, in 2018-19, a four-day game was staged between India and Cricket Australia XI.
A BCCI official was quoted as saying about the decision that the host teams often do not provide their ‘best’ domestic players for the practice, which defeats the purpose of a warm-up.
“Normally, home countries nowadays don’t want to provide their best domestic talent for practice. It always helps in quality match practice if a bunch of India hopefuls are pitted against the stars. These are players knocking on the doors and eager to perform,”
However, even that plan has been scrapped in favor of additional net sessions and center wicket practice of match situations. While the reason behind it has not been revealed yet, Australia are scheduled to have a similar center wicket training at the WACA as well.
“Going to be some good centre wickets with our boys bowling in Perth, in similar conditions to what you’re going to get at Optus Stadium. [It’s] probably going to be enough,” Steve Smith said earlier about Australia’s training before the first Test match.
India A is already in Australia where they are currently playing the first of the two four-day games versus Australia A. Since they are not playing India in the intra-squad against the main team now, they are likely to fly out to India after the conclusion of the second four-day game, which ends on November 10. Some players from the Indian A side including Abhimanyu Easwaran, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Mukesh Kumar, Khaleel Ahmed, and Navdeep Saini are part of the Indian squad as well and will join the team before the training sessions begin.
The Border-Gavaskar Trophy, which will run until the first week of January, will be India’s last red-ball series in this cycle. For India to reach the WTC final for the third time running, they will have to punch above their weights during this tour. Rohit Sharma’s men will fly to Australia on November 5, after the conclusion of the third New Zealand Test.
