Kohli versus pacers will spice it up
ADELAIDE: The India-Australia Test is the first red-ball match hosted at Adelaide Oval since India’s last visit in 2014. Since then, three day/night Tests have been played at the venue against New Zealand, South Africa and England, with the hosts prevailing on each occasion. After the first of those matches, many believed the pink ball and floodlights helped provide the seam bowlers with more swing than they could ordinarily have expected. Ball-tracking data showed the fast bowlers in that 2015 match involving New Zealand found an average of 0.79° of swing, far higher than the 0.59° on offer the previous year.
However, Adelaide has reverted to type with 0.59° and 0.60° of swing on average in the two matches featuring South Africa and England, respectively. Recent data would suggest there is little difference between the pink ball and the red ball at this venue. As such, India will know what to expect and seven of the players who featured in their last Test at Adelaide are in the squad this time around. The 2014 clash was Virat Kohli’s first as Indian Test captain and he made his mark with twin hundreds, albeit in a losing cause. That took Kohli’s tally to three hundreds at Adelaide Oval after his 116 here in 2012 and the Indian skipper is ninth in the list of runs scored by visiting players, despite having played just two Tests here.
Kohli will likely climb the list and will have his sights set on becoming just the fourth visiting batsman to score 500 runs here, cementing the venue as his favourite overseas. The bad news for Kohli and India is that the quality of Australia’s bowling attack will undoubtedly make runs hard to come by for India. Plenty has been written about the Big Three of Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood but Adelaide Oval is where the latter two in particular come into their own. Of seamers to have taken 10 wickets or more here, Starc and Hazlewood are fourth and fifth in the list of best averages.
Adelaide Oval is Starc’s favourite ground in terms of bowling average while Hazlewood has a better record only at Bellerive Oval in Hobart. The batsmen on both sides will have to counter the spin threat of Nathan Lyon and R Ashwin. Adelaide is one of Australia’s most spin-friendly venues with 33.8% of all balls ever bowled there delivered by spinners. Of the main Australian Test venues, only the Sydney Cricket Ground (34.6%) has seen a higher percentage of spin bowling. The SCG is also the only Australian ground to have seen more average turn than Adelaide Oval’s 3.9°. However, the apparently encouraging conditions for spinners have not translated into a particularly impressive record for them. Spinners average 42.76 here, the second highest for Australian venues, and fifth highest overall.
India will have to be wary of the threat posed by Lyon, who bucks the trend of spinners’ performances on his former home ground. His 37 wickets at Adelaide are the second most for a spinner behind Shane Warne’s 56 and Lyon’s strike rate is better than any spinner to have taken 20 wickets or more here. Lyon can also boast the best bowling average for any spinner since the Second World War with only Clarrie Grimmett, who played his last Test in 1933, ahead of the off-spinner on that metric.
India of course know exactly how threatening Lyon can be here – he took a 7-wicket haul in the fourth innings of the 2014 Test. Lyon took 12 wickets in that match and sealed victory. India failed to capitalise on the position they were in on that occasion. They will know they cannot afford to let such moments slip again if they are to finally emerge victorious from a Test series in Australia.