What the Australia tour really means

By Gaurang - Sep 26, 2003
September 29 2003

With a Test series at home against hard-working New Zealand close at hand, the Indian fans, media and even the BCCI seems enamored of the 4-Test tour to Australia at the end of the year. Is there too much focus on that series, and should unrealistic expectations be scaled down?

It is understandable that Indian cricket fans starved of cricket for months, and fantasizing about the Final Frontier series where Ganguly and company handed Steve Waugh and his team the biggest KLPD in the history of Test Cricket, have whipped themselves into a frenzy of expectation ahead of the tour to Australia.

What is not understandable is that the Indian media has also uncritically joined the hype. And fanned the frenzy. Apparently selling papers or magazines is their only aim. This way they win both ways: they get to sell lots of papers to gullible and naive fans who eagerly lap up the hype, and if the team does not deliver the expected results, they sell more papers ripping the team and its captain to shreds!

In other words, not too different from their modus operandi before, during, and after the 2003 World Cup.

What the discerning Indian fan must ask himself or herself is: is this hype justified? I think it is totally unjustified. I am not saying that the series won't be interesting, or that the Indian fans shouldn't expect improvement (possibly significant improvement) from their team, but I am saying that we fans must stop treating the Australia series as some sort of Final Frontier of our own.

India has not won a series anywhere else overseas recently (although they have won quite a few matches overseas) so they shouldn't expect the hardest, most demanding, physically and especially mentally, tour to be the place where they make the breakthrough. That would be plain silly.

Instead, the team and fans should treat it for what it is: an important away series against a formidable opponent, but definitely not as important as a World Cup or a Mini World Cup.

In the meantime what should fans expect from the Australia tour?

Fans should expect that India will use the Australia tour much like every other country has in the recent past. It will be a laboratory to test our young men in the most gruelling conditions, especially mentally, that they will ever face. The team management will be well aware that Australia has nearly swept every team it has faced at home, and hardly lost a Test (I know England won their final game, but the Aussies were only half paying attention by then) in recent memory.

As a fan I would adjust my expectations: A win against the Australians MUST be the aim of the team and they must go in believing it deep down, otherwise there is no point in going.

But fans must be realistic and take a drawn series however it is achieved, 0-0, 1-1 or 2-2, as success as well. Fans should also realize that even a loss, as long as India fights with all its might, is nothing to be ashamed of. After all the goal is not just to win in Australia, but to build for the future.

In that light, the goals for the team would be:

• Establish a trio or even a quartet of genuine fast bowlers who will then use their experience down under to allow India to win that elusive overseas series in less daunting places such as West Indies, England or South Africa.
• Establish a pair of opening batsman who can play on both the front and back foot. I personally think Sehwag (despite his protestations) and Yuvraj are the men to do it. Sehwag has already shown that in conditions as different as Trent Bridge to Mumbai he can open the batting successfully. Yuvraj showed he is noy afraid of pace, and that he can play horizontal bat shots, like the cut and pull, which will be the main shots on the Bouncy Australian wickets. Sanjay Bangar may yet prove to be the equal of a Chetan Chauhan, who did well in Australia, but I'd go with the young Punjab lads.
• The conspicuous batting failure of the previous tour, Rahul Dravid, must show he can bat in Australia. Not to prove anything (he is already an all-time great) but for personal reasons: to show himself that he can do it. Last time around, it was more a mental issue than any lack of technique.

If these three objectives are met, the tour should be considered a success regardless of the outcome (barring a totally one-sided romp by the Aussies).

The motto should be "Go Down Under to reach the Top."