India raced to a 2-0 lead in their ongoing home Test series against Australia, with the visiting batters proving to be largely ill-equipped to deal with the spinning conditions in the country. While there have been sporadic good performances from the Australian batters, none have been enough to make life difficult for the Indians and much of the damage from the visiting side have come from their bowlers.
There were worries, particularly in the Australian media, of the conditions for the first Test being too far skewed in favour of the spinners and against batters. However, it was fast bowlers Mohammed Siraj and Mohammed Shami who got India two early wickets before Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne batted out the first session after which India went on to score 400 runs. Former Australia captain Mark Taylor has said that the pitches in India are suited to the home players, whether it be batters or bowlers and the Australians didn't have the technique to play aggressively, as they tried to do in the first and second Tests.
“Yes, conditions in Australia are different. Yes, the Australian side goes there more often these days with the IPL. But the pitches there are unique. There is not a doubt about that. They are putting out slow low turners, which suit their type of play. And we are not used to playing on those types of pitches. We went over there with a mentality to be positive to take it on, be aggressive which is not a bad mentality to have. But you've got to have a technique for that. The execution was poor in the second Test,” sad Taylor while speaking with Wide World of Sports.
{{/usCountry}}“Yes, conditions in Australia are different. Yes, the Australian side goes there more often these days with the IPL. But the pitches there are unique. There is not a doubt about that. They are putting out slow low turners, which suit their type of play. And we are not used to playing on those types of pitches. We went over there with a mentality to be positive to take it on, be aggressive which is not a bad mentality to have. But you've got to have a technique for that. The execution was poor in the second Test,” sad Taylor while speaking with Wide World of Sports.
{{/usCountry}}Taylor said that while he didn't play too many times in India, he doesn't have good memories of playing Test matches in the country. “I did not play a lot of Test matches in India. In 1998, we got beaten in the first test at Chennai in a pretty good game. Second Test, we played at Eden Gardens and got absolutely hammered. It’s not unique what has happened to the Australian team, it’s happened in the past too. We got beaten by an innings and 220 runs in Eden Gardens. It’s not too much fun. That’s what happened this time. All the sudden, you find the game moves ahead very quickly. As we saw with Australia on Day three in the last test match. All of a sudden, things start going in the wrong direction, it’s hard to stop the momentum. That’s happened with us in Eden Gardens. The good news for us was that we did turn it around in the final test in Bengaluru. We won on a much better even pitch. You can turn it around but it’s not easy when the pitches are as they are now,” said Taylor.