New Delhi: India is now playing the Men’s T20 World Cup in Australia with some comprehensive preparation behind them.
The main challenge lies in adapting to the pace and bounce of the pitches in Australia. The pitches in Australia are the fastest in the cricketing world and that means, bowlers who have high pace and consistently hit short-pitched deliveries will be very impactful in the T20 World Cup apart from wrist-spinners getting more purchase than finger spinners.
“We will get an opportunity to spend a few days and sessions in Perth and then have a couple of matches there. Australia is quite unique in terms of the pace and bounce on those wickets and a lot of our players have not played a lot of T20 cricket in Australia,” head coach Rahul Dravid had said.
From the main squad, Harshal Patel and Deepak Hooda had toured Australia but as members of India U19 side in 2009 and 2013 respectively, while Suryakumar Yadav, Axar Patel and Arshdeep Singh haven’t had the experience of playing competitive cricket in the country.
Speaking in Australia, Rohit said: “Lot of the guys haven’t been to Australia. That’s the reason we are going there early and getting used to the conditions there, which is why we are first going to Perth, to try and play on those bouncy pitches and see what we can do there.
“Out of the 15 squad members, only seven or eight members have been to Australia before, so half of the squad has not been there before”.
In terms of bowlers, Arshdeep Singh and Ravichandran Ashwin had three-fers against their name. The pacers got some sharp bounce in the practice matches while the spinners had some turn too.
Though one won’t go much deep into the results from practice matches, India have got their planning for the preparations well. Now time is ripe for that to be translated into results during the T20 World Cup.
