by Rex Clementine
Usually, when the Australians are in town, you look forward to the cricket for they play hard and are a tough bunch well-equipped to come on top of the demanding conditions. In 2004 when the Aussies toured Sri Lanka, Hashan Thilakaratne’s side took the first-innings lead in all three Tests, but Ricky Ponting’s team bounced back and won all three games.
The current Australian side lacks the fighting spirit of teams of yesteryear. In less than six days of Test cricket in Nagpur and Delhi they have handed the Border-Gavaskar Trophy to the Indians on a platter.
The sweep proved to be their undoing. Beating India in their backyard is no easy task. With not many runs on the board, the Australians decided the easiest way to score them was the sweep and in the end played into the hands of the Indian spinners.
If you take players who have succeeded in playing spin in Asia, their strength hasn’t been the sweep. It was common sense for those were practical men.
Brian Lara played the 2001 series in Sri Lanka when Murali was at his peak. He gave everyone a lesson on how to counter spin. His strengths were trusting his defence and using his feet. Depending on where the ball pitched, Lara would decide how he would counter the ball. There were not many backfoot scoring shots, unless the ball was short and there to be pulled. Mostly it was a case of tight defence and when there was a scoring opportunity to use the feet and find the gap. Yes, there was the sweep as well. But it didn’t involve much risk. If the ball was pitched outside the leg stump and the sweep would bring him a maximum of four runs, he would sweep. Otherwise, he just played the waiting game. That’s what Test cricket is all about. Lara made 688 runs in six innings in that series.
By sweeping even the balls pitched on the stumps, the Aussies are taking too much risk. There’s protection on the boundary and the most you would get by sweeping is two runs. The risk is not worth it.
Then, if you miss, on tracks where there’s little bounce, you are a sitting duck being a prime lbw suspect. Just look at how many batters were dismissed lbw in the series.
Not just Lara, other batters like Stephen Fleming, Andy Flower, Matthew Hayden and Joe Root have been successful in tackling spin in the sub-continent.
Hayden was a big sweeper but others if you take them had strengths like patience, solid defence and use of the feet to their advantage.
In the Australian side, everyone is sweeping. The moment Usman Khawaja had some success playing the sweep in Delhi, the others too had made up their minds that they are going to live by the sweep forgetting that the chances of them perishing by a high-risk stroke were heavy.
Mind you nobody ended up top edging and getting caught trying to play the sweep. All the batters completely missed the sweep and were either bowled or given out leg before wicket. They need to sort their game before Indore.