Bengaluru: The insecurities have been left behind. The doubts and quizzical looks on the Australian players’ faces after the thrashing at the hands of Sri Lanka and the series defeat against South Africa are now in the past.
As far as confidence goes, the Australian side have it in abundance, especially after whitewashing Pakistan at home and drubbing India, which ended the Virat Kohli-led side’s 19-match unbeaten streak, in Pune last week.
Now heading into the second Test, the team from Down Under no longer walk into the contest as the underdogs. That is despite their less than brilliant record in the sub continent.
Speaking on the eve of the tie, captain Steve Smith revealed that they will go into the match with an unchanged side. “Based on how we performed last week, I think it was a good mix. We have good fast bowlers, all-rounders who can bowl quick and two quality spinners as well. We feel that is adequate to this wicket as well,” said Smith.
With very few words wasted in expertly swatting away the relentless questions about curators and pitches, the 27-year-old addressed the larger picture:
“Coming over here, we were looking at their latest series against England wherein the first innings had some big runs and then the pitch deteriorated and spinners could come into the game a bit later on. Looking at this wicket, I think it will be similar to those games.”
“The last wicket we played on, we thought 250 was a good total. I think on this occasion we need to have a lot more in the first innings. Looking at the wicket I think it’s crucial to score big runs in the first innings and that's just about applying yourself, batting for long periods of time and building big partnerships,” he elaborated.
The captain, who is 112 runs short of reaching the 5000-run mark, was also bullish about his side’s chances while accepting that India will be right back at it to level the series.
“We know that India are going to come back hard at us and there is no doubt about that. They have played very well at home. (From) our point of view, we are going to take a lot from the way we have played in the last game. They were some tough conditions but the way the boys adapted to them were spot on. We have to start again and start from ball one here. Australia and India, there is sort of rivalry there and it doesn’t take much to get up to that sort of occasion. We know that we have to win one more game to win the Border-Gavaskar trophy and I think it can happen very quickly here in India especially in the back end of the game. We can only be a couple of session away from winning,” stated the man who walked into the team as a spinner who batted at number 8.
