India vs Australia - An average Indian fan’s perspective

It is yet another India vs Australia series and again it oozes news and demands attention. No surprises there! If you have been living under a rock, or even worse, haven’t really been following cricket over the past year or so, this wouldn’t spring any surprises. But if you have been following, then, of course, you have been intrigued by the attention it is demanding right now.

The prelude to this Test series 'Down Under', most certainly started at the Newlands Test and not with any past rivalry or tours. The most interesting part of it, other than the prelude, is, of course, India’s opportunity to win a Test series in Australian soil for the first time ever.

Australia’s most exciting Test player, Steve Smith is out, so is the audacious David Warner. Australia’s pace unit is much talked about, but considering Australia’s glorious past and mapping them on a relative scale this one is at best a wannabe great unit.

Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins alternate to being Australia’s would be replacements to the accurate, searing pace of Brett Lee. And Hazlewood is no more than a movie star, living the life of the Glenn McGrath, co-produced by the Australian team and the media. It would not even be fair to compare Nathan Lyon's effectiveness to the genius that Warne was.

While this is a really good bowling unit and a successful one at that, to term them as Australia's best ever or even better than any other contemporary can only be termed as a dream of a few. There’s no Anderson vs Kohli battle that had purists sitting up from their graves to watch.

There’s no anxiety built up over India’s pace bowling unit. It is the closest thing or perhaps the only thing that there is to Shastri’s tall claims of the best Indian unit of all time (and yes Mathew Hayden’s backing doesn’t change that one bit). Kohli has already proved himself in Australia and post that tour of England, nobody really wants to question his ability against moving balls or alien conditions.

The stinging Aussies of the past are not expected to turn up on the ground. Can they continue to project being the good guys against an aggressive Virat Kohli, is the prominent question. And with so much happening all around, it is probably worth it, to try and examine it from the lens of an average cricket fan.

#1 Ravi Shastri is a Broadcaster. Period.

Ravi Shastri is a great commentator. Not only is he lucky to be the one holding the mic at some of the most iconic moments in Indian Cricket history, but he has also been perfectly capable to add to the great moments with his firebrand commentary. But it has well dawned upon all of us that broadcasting is what he is better off doing. And it probably is not his fault as well.

Over the years, India’s most successful coaches have been the ones who have always taken a back seat. Both Gary Kirsten and John Wright were great coaches and both allowed the captains to take center stage. But then both MS Dhoni and Sourav Ganguly were shrewd tacticians with immense knowledge. Both of them were also blessed to be playing alongside some legends like Sachin, Kumble, Dravid, Laxman, and others on whom they could always fall back on. Kohli, unfortunately, misses both these factors.

There’s absolutely no doubt on his capabilities as a batsman, however, his captaincy leaves a lot to be desired. The frailties of his captaincy are evidenced by the constant chopping and changing of the team, team combination, field placements and of course the bowling changes.

This is not to take away the sheen off Shastri's achievements as a coach or to join the bring back Kumble bandwagon. Kohli is the only face of the Anti-Kumble rift that we know of. What transpired behind the scenes is unknown to us. With Laxman clearly stating that despite the CAC’s want, Kumble walked out, we are more than clear of the fact that he wouldn’t really want to be reinstated. It, therefore, doesn’t make sense to follow the topic anymore. While a strict and demanding coach like Anil Kumble might just mess up with the team in ways we do not know, it is also not to say Shastri is a perfect fit.

It is true that India has had some great results under Shastri, albeit in home conditions. But it necessarily didn’t demand much of his skills as a tactician. The condition can be related to a school of thought that says, Buchannan cannot be considered a great coach despite all the achievements under him. With the team he had at his disposal, probably anybody could have done the same. (The legitimacy of that argument, however, is for another discussion)

What India, under Virat Kohli, needs is a man-manager and a shrewd tactician. Examining Kohli’s past, his captaincy moment under the sun came with India's Win at Under-19’s World Cup in 2008. What is forgotten though is that the team was coached by Dav Whatmore. His exploits and reputation as a tactician genius during his coaching stint with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and even the Kerala Ranji team is well documented. The style of coaching could possibly be the perfect foil to the Virat Kohli-led Indian team.

#2 Sunil Gavaskar and Sanjay Manjrekar should stick to describing the game on the cricket field

A bit too often, in the recent past, we have seen some big-mouthed comments from both these cricket experts that has had us cringing. Manjrekar started off by, the now infamous, 'One last chance for Kohli' remark which many agreed to back then. But, of late, he has been a little more than eccentric. He went on to claim, on live analysis, that Mayank Agarwal should be flown to be the opener for the third Test and then went on another show saying, why he shouldn’t be thrown into the mix.

Sunil Gavaskar, on the other hand, once blasted the Indian team for not having Rahane in the limited overs mix of things, claiming funky hairstyles have been preferred over skills. He also went on a rant saying, players from Mumbai, of all places in India, for heaven’s sake, were being ignored. But what has caught our attention, most recently, is their assessment of the Indian Captain 'Virat Kohli'.

We have many a time been irked with the broadcasters’ convenient toggle between praises and rants on Kohli’s aggressiveness, based on which side of the result India end up on. While it is perfectly legitimate for anybody to have their opinions, we need to be consistent about it. You either like it or you don’t. You cannot toggle.

And with Sanjay Manjrekar and Sunil Gavaskar suggesting that this kind of aggression is not what Indian cricket is and that India should refrain from it, we, the fans from the ’90s, are ruffled. Let’s just say it was probably not for Indian cricket to play the T20 style of the game. After all, our legacy is scoring 36 from 174 balls in an important stiff chase. And Manjrekar, should we care to even speak about him? And yet, Here we are!

Disclaimer: My viewpoints do not wish to take anything away from what these two contributed to Indian cricket, as players.

The umpires were on the field throughout the length of the match and Virat Kohli has not been sanctioned. Can we just close it and move on, leaving it to the umpires? Please!