Is Australia this good? Or India that bad?

Greg Baum asked this question just now, after Umesh Yadav was caught at the wicket off Nathan Lyon to end India's 2nd innings and give Australia a 298 run win in the 4th Test at the Adelaide Oval.

The answer to both questions is a qualified Yes. Australia is good, in that they have a good pace attack - a pace attack that does very little wrong. A lot of people talk about the inexperience of Australia's attack, but Peter Siddle, Ben Hilfenhaus and Ryan Harris all have plenty of control and are fine basic Test fast bowlers. Each of them can bowl long spells, rarely bowl a bad ball, can bowl to their fields, and Siddle and Harris can really bend their backs when the occasion demands it without losing too much control. Behind these three, are James Pattinson, Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins, three young bowlers who are still raw, but have great pace and surprisingly good control. Starc, as Sachin Tendulkar found out, possesses the priceless ability to swing the ball back into the right hander, while Pattinson and Cummins are both potentially genuinely quick.

First Innings Lead Problems: Six Changes To The Ranji Trophy

I have written previously about the absurdity of having a 20 over contest with 10 batting wickets allotted to each team, with the same number of fielders and the same rules for dismissal as in a Test Match. My argument was that making the innings so severely short while leaving everything else as it is, skews the contest between bat and ball, and hence, does not sharpen skills and abilities that are necessary for actual Test cricket. In this post, I argue that the idea of granting a "win" based on first innings lead (as the Ranji Trophy allows) also skews the contest between bat and ball, to the detriment of both batting and bowling skills.

Some Cricket related diagnoses of Australia's success

Geoff Lawson, former Australian fast bowler, has offered this diagnosis of India's troubles in Australia. It comes as a pleasant surprise that someone has actually written about the cricket that has been played.

The Indian capitulation, and I use the word advisedly, has come through the agency of seam bowlers who actually hit the seam - sometimes after it has swung, sometimes without. The greats of the Indian order have been undone by accuracy, movement, discipline and some decent pace. Eight dismissals in every ten have been off the front foot; the tail have mostly got out to short stuff because that is just about all that is bowled to them. Agreeable pitches promote fuller bowling, and Craig McDermott has kept his tribe on the hymn sheet, with hallelujahs dotted on every line.

One More Loss

It happened again. The batsmen were put in against an in form pace attack, got shot out on a bowler friendly pitch. The bowlers had no answer even though I heard comments to the effect that 10 wickets in 2 sessions was a good effort. Then, the batsmen, saddled with a hopeless 200 run deficit (which is nearly insurmountable on a wicket where every single batsman on both sides was beaten once an over if the over was bowled reasonably well), were bowled out again.

Warner, "Intent" and Perth

India were blown away at the WACA on Day 1 of the Perth Test. Dave Warner score a blistering century off just 69 balls in reply to India's 161 all out. This has been India's problem all along. The batting has been below par, and has typically been 50-100 runs shy of where they ought to be in a given set of conditions. After being put in to bat on a WACA pitch with plenty of juice, India's openers were separated early for the umpteenth time in recent overseas Tests and the middle order, while it showed glimpses of its old ability to produce periods of calm batting, kept making fatal errors, just when they were beginning to look good. The inclusion of Vinay Kumar, and the suspect batting technique of Mahendra Singh Dhoni meant that India have a longish tail in this game.