Having enjoyed a relative degree of success over the past few years, Australia opener Usman Khawaja calls facing India’s revolving attack led by Ravichandran Ashwin the “hardest test” of the series four games kick off in Nagpur on 9 February. The Pakistan-born hitter, who arrived in India after his teammates due to visa delays, will open the match alongside David Warner. Khawaja has played limited cricket in India but will eventually get his chance in the longest form after joining the Test team in 2013 and 2017. Recently named ‘Test Cricket Player of the Year’ of Australia, nampaw is expected to play a key role in his team’s quest to win the first series in India since 2004-05.
“There’s definitely a different feeling. There’s no guarantee in this game, but at least there’s a little more maturity, especially in batting, and more maturity in bowling.
“We’ve learned a lot over the last 10 years, especially the types of players we can get and how we think we can perform, play and win Tests. It looks like we’re in a better position than before, but it’s always going to be tough,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Australia opted out of playing a warm-up game ahead of the Test series and instead opted to simulate friends-turning conditions near Bengaluru when they arrived last week.
They clearly see Ashwin as the biggest threat from the opposition, to the point that they have taken hold of his ‘copy’ as part of their preparations for the high-level competition.
A team full of lefties, Australia is working overtime to tackle the Ashwin threat.
“Ashwin is a gun. He’s very skillful, he has a lot of complicated little variations, he also uses folds pretty well. If you asked me the same question when I was younger, I would probably have Khawaja could not speak.
“But it’s one of the really good challenges. The racquet will come back here at some point, whether it’s day one, day three or day four, and he’s going to be in the game and hit. lots of balls.
“So it’s all about finding out how I’m going to play against him, how I’m going to score against him, what he can do. If you play him in one In the long run, he will change his game plan against him.” Friend.
“He’s not the type to do the same thing over and over again, he’ll try to solve your problems.” The away team is expecting a turn-around in all four matches, making the trio of Ashwin, Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja more powerful with the new ball.
“If it’s a good racket, then the new ball is probably the easiest time to hit the ball. But as soon as the racquet degrades in India and you have people bowling with a new ball, that’s probably it. It’s the hardest time to hit the ball anywhere.
“When we practice, the new ball on the spinning top is always the hardest time. People say the opening is the best time to hit the ball in the subcontinent, that’s when it’s flat. , but not when it spins when there’s so much variation with that new ball. Once it softens, it’s easier to predict what it will do,” added Khawaja.
He also narrated his journey upon arriving in India.
“That’s what it happened – to be honest, I just wanted to go there. There was a direct flight from Sydney to Bangalore and unfortunately I missed that flight, which was terrible.
“For a long time, I had to go down to Melbourne and then from Melbourne I was three hours late from Sydney to Melbourne, so it took me five or six hours to get there.
“Then I was delayed by another four hours from Melbourne to Delhi, so one delay after another. Still a bit wobbly after the flight. Oh, here I am,” he added.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
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