Hosed down: Nagpur spin practice thwarted

Plans for Australia's batters to practice on the Nagpur pitch that had confounded them in the Border Gavaskar Trophy series opener have been scuppered by local curators.

Only hours before a planned training session on what should have been day four of the first Test, the Aussies were forced to cancel after learning the surface they played on as well as the practice nets had been watered the previous day.

A member of the VCA Stadium groundstaff was observed hosing down the pitch after the Australians left the ground on Saturday afternoon not long after India had wrapped up an innings victory inside three days.

While watering the wicket square after a Test finishes is far from unusual, the Australians had requested the pitch be kept intact to allow their misfiring top-order valuable additional practice the following afternoon.

Speaking to radio station SEN, coach Andrew McDonald insisted the planned session was not "naughty boy nets" but rather a further opportunity for their batters to come to terms with "extreme" conditions.

Pre-match suggestions of pitch doctoring – not from the Australian players, who made no public complaints about the state of the Nagpur surface – elicited a bemused response from two leading Indian players after their comprehensive victory.

Ravichandran Ashwin, speaking in an interview with Rohit Sharma and posted to the Indian cricket board's website after the spinner destroyed the Aussies in their second innings, asked his captain: "Pitch talk is the real favourite topic on social media, especially for touring teams.

"When you were batting or they were batting … not one ball nicked off and went to silly point or short leg. You guys did not look in trouble. What is the secret? Is it good batsmanship or is it that we played on a different pitch?"

Rohit, whose near-flawless 120 in the first innings was the difference in the match, replied: "Same pitch … It’s beyond my understanding why there is so much talk about the pitch.

"It's sad to see there is not enough talk about skills, of the bowler, of the batter. People are not talking about the bowler and the batter, which is extremely sad, but that's how it is. It doesn’t really bother us."

It comes as Australia muse over the non-selection of Travis Head and face questions over the make-up of the batting line-up.

McDonald and captain Pat Cummins have called for their batters to be bolder for the rest of the series, having anticipated Nagpur would offer the most turn of any of the venues for the four-Test campaign.

Head has surged to become the world's No.4-ranked Test batter on the back of consecutive dominant home summers, but was overlooked after averaging 15 in seven innings in Asia last year.

McDonald conceded the left-hander had not agreed with the call.

"We valued others' skillsets in those extreme conditions," said the coach. "I think the discussion point that we went through in the process will be different to the hindsight.

"The hindsight is that those people that you will compare the competition for places around didn't perform the way that we'd probably expected.

"… Everything I've said there around what we valued going into the first Test was explained to Trav.

"He had different thoughts on that and that's fair enough and he's entitled to have different thoughts on that, along with others.

"We're not saying any decision that we make is right or wrong."

McDonald denied suggestions Head had been considered as an opener to bat in place of Warner, who has previously struggled in India.

After scores of 1 and 10 in the first Test, the 36-year-old now averages 22.16 from 18 innings in the country.

He has admittedly come up repeatedly against two of India's finest ever bowlers – Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja who took 15 of the Australian wickets in the first Test – in conditions few batters around the world have been able to conquer them in.

"It's a sample size of one game," said McDonald when asked about Warner.

"We’ll work through his individual methods and how he needs to go about it.

"We haven't discussed that (Head as opener) at all. We’ll discuss the performance of the first Test match. We haven't even got into a selection discussion (for the second Test).

"The benefit out of losing the game so quickly is we’ve got a little bit more think-time to work through what scenarios are for us – and that starts today." 

Border-Gavaskar Qantas Tour of India 2023

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

February 17-21: Second Test, Delhi, 3pm AEDT

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

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

All matches will be 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: (for the first two Tests) 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, Jaydev Unadkat, Suryakumar Yadav