There are still a couple of days left for the ball to roll. India is looking to secure a place in the World Test Championship Final to be held in June 2025 and the first step will be in Bangladesh at the MA Chidambaram Stadium .
With India planning their attack on the neighbors, who are coming here with the wind on their backs after an away series win over Pakistan, there seems to be a shift in the mindset of the Indian camp.
In what seems like a reversal of the trend that one witnessed at Chepauk, there has been a change of surface as India will play the Test on a red-soil pitch which will assist the bowlers more and both spinners and pace bowlers should enjoy the conditions, provided they are accurate. Curiously enough, three yearsago, Kohli’s India played the first of the two tests against England at home on a red soil pitch and lost pretty badly.
Its management got annoyed, the curator was sent home, and India were back to black-soil for the second Test- which was still and empty border line where the ball started to turn prodigiously from the very first session, and India had a huge comeback.
However, for the mentioned Bangladeshi series, the Indian team management has some other plans or nearly all players will be selected for their unique skills aka tactics. Although it is quite clear how much they love their spin trio of R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and most probably Kuldeep Yadav on these appeasing conditions, the new think tank does not mind leaving something for their faster bowlers too.
But there is Jasprit Bumrah, who has been on a historic run of form and can really be the match winner here while the second fast bowler – out of Mohammed Siraj and Akash Deep – should be provided with some readiness in the surface as well. In fact, he is known to have bowled for a long time a day before in the practice where it will be curious to observe whether or not India deploy three seamers and reserve Kuldeep for another match.
It is possible that the choice of the pitch will be influenced by the weaknesses of the opponents as well. Amit Gambhir, the eldest coach would want to put off such threats of Bangladesh finger spinners Shakib Al Hasan, Mehidy Hasan Miraz, Taijul Islam etc who can take advantages of the conditions very well.
The cover over the match pitch which was used for watering this morning was lifted and from afar one could see that there were no cracks on the surface. There was an impression that if both the teams batted well, then there would be competition, as there was not excessive assistance from this one department. However, when it got to the practice on a hot Monday morning, the Indian team went on to make it rather tougher for the batters than what it had been during the game. The practice wicket that Bumrah, Ashwin, etc. bowled on was similar to that of a fourth day red soil wicket mainly from the amount of spin and deviation that the spinner experienced on it. And it really added a lot of confusion to the Australian captain’s side where young opener Yashasvi Jaiswal is supposed to open with captain Rohit Sharma.
Jaiswal specifically struggled with practice bowlers, let alone Bumrah and Akash Deep, and was out caught on many occasions trying to play outside off-stump. While batting with Jaiswal, Virat Kohli paused while speaking with the left-hand batsman, but there were still issues. Most importantly, such was the level of difficulty for this 22-year-old that after a prolonged 40-minute session, Jaiswal headed to the MAC ‘B’ practice net for some knocking and wanders back to my center square.
The situation, however, did not change drastically, however, one thing which may be said in Jaiswalâ s defence is that not a single batsman in Indiaâ s supposedly formidable batting order had it easy. Even the likes of Kohli were out on a couple of occasions and the ever so fierce Indian legend in Kohli did not show any semblance of satisfaction when Bumrah celebrated after taking his wicket.
However, that meant quite a lot regarding the level of devotion that this contemporary great has for the taskment as India tries to try to try to eliminate one of four highlights necessary for the task to pass approachable as far as the Road to WTC Final may be.
