McDonald dissects 'perceived pressure' of Indian spinners

Andrew McDonald does not believe Australia are spooked by Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, but conceded his batters must find a way to handle the "perceived pressure" created by the spin destroyers.

The tourists are picking up the pieces at the midway point of their India tour having gone from putting their opponents in a "vulnerable" position for the first time in the series to surrendering the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in the space of a couple of hours via an extraordinary collapse of 8-28 in Delhi.

Ashwin and Jadeja took all 10 second-innings scalps and have now accounted for 31 of the 40 Australian wickets to fall across the two Tests.

The pair have been the leading wicket-takers on the Aussies' two previous tours to India in 2013 and 2017 and have accounted for 55 per cent of all the wickets taken by India in home Tests over the past seven years.

Australia's focus on them has extended to their use of Baroda off-spinner Mahesh Pithiya as a net bowler due to the likeness in his bowling action to Ashwin's, while assistant coach Dan Vettori has been called on to replicate the different arm release points of both Jadeja and fellow left-armer Axar Patel.

"I don't think you get spooked, but the reality is that the majority of time that India perform those two take the majority of their wickets and they bowl the majority of the overs too," McDonald said of Jadeja and Ashwin.

"When they’ve got the ball in hand and they’re wheeling away in these conditions, there's a fair chance that they're going to be the people that will take the most wickets.

"Were we clear on the way that we wanted to play them? Yes. Did we go away from that? Yes. And did we fail going away from what we had planned? Yes."

That final point was the main factor in their day-three implosion, according to McDonald.

Australia's batters were implored to be brave after they were sitting ducks in Nagpur when they were rolled for their lowest-ever total in India, but the coach suggested their Delhi collapse was more to do with hastily adapted methods being tried on the fly.

That critique would appear to include Steve Smith, the first domino to fall in the extraordinary procession when he was lbw attempting his first sweep shot of the series.

Smith and Marnus Labuschagne had taken their side to 2-85, ahead by 86, when the pair exited in quick succession and the rest of the middle-order followed, none of them passing double-digits.

"It’s once again pressure and in this case more perceived pressure than anything," said McDonald.

"Our methods are going to be critiqued and rightfully so. There were some people who went clearly away from the game plan that made them successful over a period of time and that’s for us to own as a collective.

“We’ve got to be better than that, that’s the bottom line. We’ve got to own it and we are not here to shy away from the fact that wasn’t good enough.

"We have got to find the balance between that aggressive play and also defence, and being able to rotate the strike.

"We felt like we had India in a really vulnerable position, it was the first time in the series we saw the fielders back and (India) actually having to control the tempo.

"Marnus and 'Smudge' (Smith) had the game in their control at 2-85 looking to extend that lead. The rest was pretty plain to see. Pretty poor."

The departure of six of the Aussies to cross-bat shots in the second innings has been questioned, but McDonald insisted it is not an issue for those who rely on the sweep to score.

Usman Khawaja was out sweeping in both innings for instance, but also got more than a third of his first-innings runs with conventional and reverse sweeps. His 81 was the highest score of the match.

Alex Carey has been dismissed playing the shot in three innings out of four, but had success sweeping in Sri Lanka last year.

"We don’t want to go away from that, (but) part of that method is finding that balance and you do need an element of good fortune on surfaces like that," said McDonald.

The former Test allrounder also suggested his side could learn from the watchful batting of Axar, who from numbers eight and nine, has scored more runs than any of the Australian batters in this series and done so at the relatively sedate strike-rate 54.67.

In contrast, McDonald suggested Australia had been too eager to "rush to a total" in their second innings.

"It felt like we're in a good position, 80-something ahead and we wanted it to suddenly be 130 ahead really, really quickly," he said.

"That's something that we'll tease out with the batters and hopefully we can replicate that position in one of the next two games and nail it.

"It's a lot of hard work to get into that position and that's the real disappointing part, is that those positions in India aren't handed over easily and we had one, we had a really good look at it.

"That's the frustration and within the group we know how much we're going to need to invest to get back into that position."

Border-Gavaskar Qantas Tour of India 2023

February 9-13: India won by an innings and 132 runs

February 17-21: India won by six wickets

March 1-5: Third Test, Indore, 3pm AEDT

March 9-13: Fourth Test, Ahmedabad, 3pm AEDT

All matches broadcast live and exclusive on Fox Cricket and Kayo Sports

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Ashton Agar, Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Peter Handscomb, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Matt Kuhnemann, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Lance Morris, Todd Murphy, Matthew Renshaw, Steve Smith (vc), Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, David Warner

India squad: Rohit Sharma (c), KL Rahul (vc), Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KS Bharat, Ishan Kishan, Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Suryakumar Yadav, Jaydev Unadkat