India vs Australia: Pat Cummins & Co eye capital gains!

Australia skipper Pat Cummins at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium yesterday. Pic/Getty Images

Fast reaching the point of no-return, the option in front of Australia is clear - rid the gremlins festering in their heads, relegate their apprehensions about the pitch to the background and take the field without preconceived notions. That's easier said than done, especially given how obsessive Australia have been in their preparation, convinced for no good reason that they will be confronted by minefields on this Test tour of India.

Humbled inside three days by an innings in Nagpur last week, Australia have the opportunity to reiterate their spunk and spirit from Friday when the second Test gets going at the Arun Jaitley Stadium. From the look of things, they haven't been able to get rid of their surface tension, given how much time they have spent inspecting the 22-yard strip of real estate, dry but not overly so, nestled in the middle of the ground. But so long as they find their own individual ways of countering spin and their inner demons, they should be all right. Or so skipper Pat Cummins will believe.

Seldom has an Australian team looked so ordinary as the one that turned up in Nagpur. Scores of 177 and 91 hardly did justice to their skills, their standing as the No. 1 Test team in the world or to the surface, on which India piled up 400 batting second. If ever the stage was set for a rousing comeback, it would be now.

The visitors, however, won't find India in a charitable mood. Over the years, India have managed to find a method through which they remain in their own cocoon. They respect the opposition and pay attention to the threats they possess, but much of their introspection is internal. That focus is unlikely to shift in Cheteshwar Pujara's 100th Test, which India will hope to celebrate by grabbing an unbeatable 2-0 advantage.

The black-soil pitch at the Kotla doesn't facilitate the game moving at any great pace, but even so, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel possess enough guile to impose themselves on the opposition. Australia might be tempted to play three spinners of their own, with one of left-arm tweakers Ashton Agar or Matt Kuhnemann linking up with Nathan Lyon and Todd Murphy, but that will depend largely on whether Cameron Green is cleared to bat and bowl.

Also Read: Australian spinners struggling with low bounce, admits skipper Pat Cummins

While the visitors will fret over their availability of Green and Mitchell Starc, India will welcome Shreyas Iyer back into the playing XI. Head coach Rahul Dravid waxed eloquent on Wednesday about Iyer's temperament and skills - he averages 56.72 in seven Tests - and said he'd walk straight into the side if fully fit. Iyer appears to have recovered completely from the back injury aggravated a month back in Thiruvananthapuram, with Suryakumar Yadav set to make way for his fellow Mumbaikar.

1959
The year Oz won its only Test at New Delhi