India v Australia, 4th Test, Dharamsala - Preview
“Beware of falling boulders,” screamed a huge board on the way from the Gaggal airport to the hotel in Dharamsala that the Indian and Australian teams are currently residents of. How do you beware of falling boulders? What can you do to avoid them when you are driving?
Falling boulders, however, isn’t what the teams must beware of when they begin the fourth and final act of a gripping production at the HPCA Stadium on Saturday (March 25). If anything, they must beware of nerves, of self-imposed pressure, of the possibility of an already heated series getting further out of hand, given the stakes involved over the next five days. Victory for India will cement its reputation as a team virtually invincible at home; a coup for Australia will mean so much more for Steven Smith and his men who have displayed the kind of resilience, character and courage not many might have expected of them when they arrived in India in the second week of February.
This series has been a great advertisement of Test cricket with ebbs and flows, with fortunes fluctuating wildly, with teams bouncing back when pushed to a corner.
It is against this backdrop that the HPCA Stadium braces for its Test debut. And, as has been the case all series, one of the biggest talking points has been how the pitch will play.
For once, though, even pitch-talk on the eve of a Test in India was forced to take a back seat. It must take something extraordinary for the surface to the relegated to the background; the danger of Virat Kohli missing a home Test, any Test, through injury is extraordinary enough.
India faces the very genuine possibility of squaring up for the decider without its mercurial leader, still feeling the effects of the shoulder injury sustained while fielding in Ranchi last week. Every effort is underway to get the skipper match-ready, but time isn’t necessarily Kohli or physio Patrick Farhart’s ally. India will wait till the morning to see if its captain is available to lead the side to battle. If he is not, then Ajinkya Rahane will walk out for the toss in a Test match for the first time, and Shreyas Iyer will make his maiden appearance because it is pretty much certain that India will continue to go in with six specialist batsmen.
There have been mixed reports about how the pitch will play. The curator promised a fast and bouncy surface, but the work that has gone in to the track in the last couple of days would suggest otherwise. The basic nature of the surface will be impossible to alter at this late stage – there is more pace and bounce here than perhaps any other venue in India, but that again is relative – but the generous use of brushes to scrape grass off the top, and Steven Smith’s assertion that it is dry underneath could be indicators that spin won’t be merely a support act.
Dharamsala has been a fairly high-scoring limited-overs venue because of the lightning quick outfield and the rarified air because of which the ball travels further, elements that David Warner will be hoping brings about the turnaround in his own fortunes. Expected to such a key component of the Australian wheel, Warner has only mustered 131 runs in six innings thus far, the momentum and impetus he usually provides at the top of the tree severely muted by the spin combine of R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja.
Warner is only to a lesser degree to Australia what Kohli is to India. Smith is the best batsman in the Australian line-up but Warner clearly is the more impactful player, setting the tempo early on when he is teeing off and transferring without subtlety heaps of pressure on to the opposition. In this series, Warner hasn’t seriously tested India’s character yet, but after a meeting with the Dalai Lama, he could just calm himself down to produce that one definitive innings that will relegate everything else that has preceded it to nothingness.
Australia comes into this game both high on confidence and excited at the prospect of becoming the first side since Ricky Ponting’s in 2003-04 to eke out a series win on India's patch. Its stonewalling draw in Ranchi has lifted spirits massively and, coupled with its 333-run win on the diabolical Pune minefield, has given it the belief that no matter what India throw at it, it has the resources to meet the challenge head-on.
Warner apart, every member of the top-six has had at least one meaningful outing, though it will be interesting to see how the bowling group has recovered from having spent 210 overs on the trot in the third Test. Even in these days of a scientific and systematic approach to rest and recovery, it is quite an ask to return the freshness at the end of a long season to Josh Hazlewood, the paceman who sent down 44 of those overs, or to Steve O’Keefe, the left-arm spinner who wheeled away for 77 overs.
Australia is pretty set to go in with an unchanged XI unless it reads the surface differently in the morning and pick a third seamer in Jackson Bird, or if it feels the returning Pat Cummins or Hazlewood need their workloads reassessed. India will toss up between Ishant Sharma, effective only in patches, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, whose presence should allow the think-tank to extend its horses-for-courses policy. Ishant has left nothing behind in the changing room but hasn’t made a massive impact thus far; Bhuvneshwar has risen to the occasion every time he has been called up in the last eight months or so.
From India’s point of view, it will also be imperative for Ashwin to rouse himself up one final time during a home season that has netted him 78 wickets. Off colour and blunted by the lack of bite off the track in Ranchi, the offie will have to dig deep to reclaim the status of the No. 1 Test bowler from Jadeja; if he can do that, India can make sure it snatches the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, the coveted piece of silverware, back from Australia, quietly confident and always formidable.
Teams (from):
India: Virat Kohli (capt), KL Rahul, M Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Karun Nair, Shreyas Iyer, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umesh Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Jayant Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Abhinav Mukund.
Australia: Steven Smith (capt), David Warner, Matt Renshaw, Shaun Marsh, Peter Handscomb, Glenn Maxwell, Matthew Wade (wk), Pat Cummins, Steve O'Keefe, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood, Ashton Agar, Mitchell Swepson, Jackson Bird, Usman Khawaja, Marcus Stoinis.