India tour of Australia 2014-15 News

Australian pacer, Mitchell Johnson talks about the big 2014-15 spat between Virat Kohli and him.

On this day, eight years ago, MS Dhoni called time on his illustrious Test career.

Setting the stage with ruthless aggression, Kohli charged up a team that did not shy away from grabbing an opponent by its throat.

December 26, 2010, would forever be remembered as one of the darkest days in Australian cricket. It was day 1 of the Boxing Day Test that year, played against England as the fourth game of the Ashes series. The contest stood at 1-1 coming into this all-important game. By the end of the day's play, Australia's chances of regaining Ashes had evaporated. Batting first, Australians witnessed an unimaginable batting collapse - being bowled out for 98, that too on the most prominent day of their annual cricket calendar. England had already reached 157/0 by the end of the day. Eventually, Australia lost that series 3-1, their first home Ashes loss since 1986/7. This was the exclamation mark proclaiming the definitive end to the Australian era - the period of their utter domination in world cricket. The decline had been well underway after the 2007 World Cup. Now it had reached its nadir. As we approach the Boxing Day Test match for 2020, is there a link between that infamous collapse 10 years ago and Australia's demolition of Indian batting line-up at Adelaide that saw one of the best batting line-ups bundled out for 36? Yes there is! Let us explain. When Australia suffered that humiliating 3-1 loss to England, they seemed in a complete mess. There was no light visible at the end of the tunnel for the proud cricketing nation. While they still had some decent batsmen, the bowling cupboard looked completely bare. Mitchell Johnson suffered so badly in that Ashes that he was mentally scarred. But at least he came up with one match-winning performance in that series. Others failed to do even that. No one in Australia knew where they would find decent fast bowlers. The spin department was even worse off. The search for Shane Warne's successor had led to innumerable spinners being tried at the Test level but all of them came a cropper eventually. When Australia played their first Test series after that Ashes debacle, in Sri Lanka, at Galle, they picked a former groundsman from the Adelaide Oval as their spinner. His name was Nathan Lyon. When he came into bowl his first over, the batsman facing him was an all-time great batsman against spin bowling - Kumar Sangakkara. The first ball Lyon bowled in his career was nicely flighted and it drifted in from round the wicket angle to the left-hander. The ball pitched, spun, took the edge and was caught at slip. This was a perfect sign of things to come. Today, the off-spinner stands on the cusp of 400 Test wickets. Australia were able to win that series 1-0. Their next Test assignment was a two-match series in South Africa later that year. For the second match of the series, searching for their next great fast bowler, Australia brought in a 17-year old kid who had amazed everyone with his speed, above 140 kph, at this tender age - Pat Cummins. The teenager had already impressed in limited-overs cricket. In his debut Test, at Johannesburg, Cummins justified all the hype by picking up a six-wicket haul in the second innings and then hitting the winning runs to complete a fairytale start to his career. Next Test series that year for Australia was on home turf, against New Zealand. The team was still trying to find new fast bowlers. The squad for this series included three young uncapped pacers - James Pattinson, Ben Cutting, and a left-arm seamer called Mitchell Starc. Cutting missed out but Pattinson and Starc made their debuts. While the former picked up a five-for, Starc didn't make much of a mark. But Australia saw potential in him. They persisted with him. However, things didn't progress in a linear ascending curve for Lyon, Cummins, and Starc. Lyon had to struggle and face failures while Cummins started suffering from injuries that didn't let him play another Test for more than five years. Starc couldn't cement his place in the side and had to be on the sidelines for long periods. When Australia demolished England in the 2013/14 Ashes series, it was with a bowling attack that had Mitchell Johnson, Ryan Harris, and Peter Siddle. Only Lyon remained in the side from the young guns. And he fully established himself as a leading spinner in the world only after a 12-wicket haul in the first Test against India in the 2014/15 series, at Adelaide Oval. However, in that very match, Peter Siddle had a disappointing outing. For the next match, Australia replaced him with debutante Josh Hazlewood. His entry into the team was due to a brilliant showing in the ODI series against South Africa which preceded the Test series against India. He picked up a five-for and debut and has never looked back. Starc became the successor to Johnson after his retirement about a year later. So, there you have it, Hazlewood, Starc, and Lyon were all together. Cummins made his re-entry into Test cricket in the third Test of the series in India, in 2017. Immediately, he made an impact, picking up a four-for in the first innings on a flat pitch. Later that year, when Australia thumped England at home again, the attack that did the damage was Starc, Hazlewood, Cummins, and Lyon. Today, it's this attack that is embarrasing teams around the world. They demolished England in the Ashes last year, then Pakistan and New Zealand at home, and now, India. Today, when Australia look at the upcoming Boxing Day Test full of optimism, they should cast their mind back at the mayhem a decade ago. It was on that fateful day that the old order of Australia fully crumbled, forcing the administration of cricket in that country to look for new options, new players, and new stars. Today, those new stars have established Australia back at the top of the ladder - a position they relinquished back then.

Australia and England are two very different countries when it comes to the challenges they present to the batsmen. In UK, the challenge comes from the generous swing bowlers get while Down Under, it's the bounce which tests out a batsman's technique. In 2014, Virat Kohli endured the most miserable time of his career when he went through five Test matches in England without gettting even one half-century. But later that year, in Australia, he plundered over 500 runs in a four-match Test series with four centuries. However, Kohli's performances against Australia in the last two series have been well under-par by his own lofty standards. In the 2017 home series against the Aussies, the Indian captain didn't get even as far as 20 in the five innings he played. In the 2018/19 series in Australia, he scored arguably the best hundred of his career at Perth but otherwise, was overshadowed by Cheteshwar Pujara. It did seem that Australian bowlers had a better plan against Kohli than other bowlers. This plan got somewhat revealed in the first ODI of the series that preceded the Test contest on this tour. The plan was simple - bowl the fifth-stump line. This is the one area where Kohli's vulnerability was known years ago and was exploited by many. In fact, it was this line that caused his downfall in the 2018 England tour. However this line proved innocuous when the English bowlers were denied the help from swing-friendly conditions. Kohli's mountain of runs against the same team at home in the 2016 home sereis was testament to that. So, why did Australia succeed with the same strategy? This was because of a slight adjustment by the Australians to this strategy. In England, the ball swings, hence bowlers in that country natuarally bowl a fuller length. This length proves disasterous in Indian conditions, as Jimmy Anderson and his colleagues found out in India. Australian bowlers, on the other hand, having been brought up on hard pitches, bowl shorter, what is called back-of-a-length. The Aussie bowlers realized that pitching the ball up, even on a fifth-stump line would allow Kohli to use his driving prowess to great effect. So, they combined this line with a shorter length, to take away Kohli's drives and make him look for more ambitious shots. It worked in the first ODI of the three-match series last month. Kohli would have understood that this would be the mode of attack that Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins would employ in the only Test of the series he will play. To counter that, Kohli went back to the strategy that allowed him to conquer what many regarded as his final frontier - England. In 2018, before the 5-match Test series in England, all the hype was about the Anderson vs Kohli contest. The big question that everyone asked was: can Kohli overcome Anderson's skills? The Indian batting maestro did that with aplomb. He scored more than 500 runs and avoided, if narrowly, getting out to Anderson even once. When asked how he turned the tables on England after that ghastly tour of 2014, he said it needed getting over his ego. On field, it meant being uncharacteristically patient and leaving deliveries on the dreaded fifth-stump line alone all day. This made him successful, though, it also meant that he didn't dominate Anderson but showed him great respect. Now, this wouldn't have been easy for the fiery and often intemperate Indian captain. He must have needed to dig really deep to get over the urge of trying to go after Anderson and prove his superiority. But by ignoring the short-term but dangerous pleasure of hitting boundaries against his English adversary, he achieved the ultimate goal of scoring big runs in England. On day 1 of the first Test against Australia at Adelaide, Kohli used the same method to achieve success, though it was cut short by a run-out. For a batsmen whose breathtaking strokeplay has earned millions of admirers around the world, Kohli showed incredible restraint and used the leave outside the off-stump to great effect. Kohli's 74 took an unusually long 180 balls. This was a great example of why Test cricket is the greatest sport in the world and way better than the ersatz spectacle of T20 cricket. It doesn't just depend on your skill but your personality as a whole. To succeed in Test cricket, for a decent period of time, one needs to use the strength of his character, not just skill and talent. The evolution of Kohli from an intemperate hothead to a victor over his ego is the best example of the greatness of this format and this sport. It's also a testament to the grit and determination that the 32-year old genius has shown in his cricketing journey.

History tells us one thing very clearly about Australian pitches - they are the most difficult in the world for finger-spinners, especially off-spinners. This is why the pantheon of great Aussie spinners consists entirely of leg-spinners - Clarie Grimmett, Bill O'Reilly, Richie Benaud, Shane Warne, etc. Off-spinners have been produced by Australia. But before the arrival of Nathan Lyon, they enjoyed only modest success for their team, at least in terms of numbers. The greatest among them was, probably, Ashley Mallett. Bruce Yardley and Tim May also did a good job for their team, but not for as long and as successfully as the leggies. How difficult the land Down Under is for offies can be gauged by looking at the performances of great spinners of this variety from around the world in this country. During the 1960s - arguably the golden era of off-spin bowling, the likes of Erapalli Prasanna, Lance Gibbs, and South Africa's lesser-known Hugh Tayfield had success over there. These bowlers are the greatest of this category of bowlers in the history of the game. But in the last few decades, be it Muttiah Muralitharan, Harbhajan Singh, or many other off-break bowlers, they have been completely ineffective on tours of that country. In case of Murali, the controversy regarding his action and the hostility of the cricket establishment over there can be cited as an excuse. But others have struggled also. Saqlain Mushtaq and Graeme Swann got a five-wicket haul in Australia. But apart from that, they also had ordinary figures. So, in 2011, when Ravichandran Ashwin was chosen to be India's lead spinner on the tour of Australia, in only his second international Test series - he made his debut against West Indies at home that year - not much was expected of him. He had a promising start to the series, getting four wickets in the first match. But then, endured two miserable matches where Michael Clarke and Ricky Ponting, along with Michael Hussey, ground Indian bowling into dust. Ashwin, like many before him, returned from Australia, battered and bruised. His second opportunity to prove himself in the 'final frontier' came three years later. On the 2014/15 tour, the Indian team sprung a surprise in the first Test, played at Adelaide, by dropping Ashwin and selecting the leg-spinner Karn Sharma. Not only did the latter fail to make a mark, the Australian counterpart of Ashwin, ended up picking 12 wickets. He did get an opportunity in the next three Tests, but failed to make an impression, mainly due to the imperious batting by Steve Smith. Not only did he not get a five-for, the equivalent of a century for a batsman, but went for a lot of runs. Ashwin's third opportunity to prove himself in this country arrived on the historic tour of 2018/19. This time, he not only had much more experience but had a very feeble looking Aussie batting line-up against him. In the first Test at Adelaide, Ashwin picked up three wickets in the first innings. With the pitch providing generous turn, he had a gold-plated opportunity to finish off the match and finally bury the ghost of not having won a match outside Asia. But on the final day, Ashwin had to go through over 40 overs without a wicket while the pacers kept chipping away. He did pick up the last wicket but it was merely a consolation. Then, he got injured and missed the rest of the series. Now, Ashwin is in Australia for the fourth time. This country remains unconquered by his wiles. For a man who holds the record for getting 300 wickets in less number of Tests than anyone in history, his overseas record, or to be more precise, his record outside Asia, remains disappointing. Even if the numbers don't look so bad, the lack of a match-winning, or match-changing, or even eye-grabbing performance, is very odd. This then, is the fourth and, who knows, the last opportunity for the Tamil Nadu spinner to prove himself. He is in a similar position to Virat Kohli before the tour of England in 2018. Getting wickets in Australia is the most difficult proposition for any off-spinner. No bowler of this variety has managed a match-winning performance in Australia this century, except Graeme Swann in the Adelaide Test of 2010. Can Ashwin finally pass the litmus test, on his fourth try? Only time will tell. He can't claim to be an all-time great without doing so.