Oz target sweep, not India preparation
SYDNEY: Steve Smith’s sole aim will be to keep Australia in the winning habit when they take on a Pakistan side contemplating the imminent departure of their most successful captain in the dead rubber Sydney Test this week.
With a first Test series win of the season already in the bag after the dramatic victory in the Boxing Day test in Melbourne, Australia have continued the reconstruction of their team ahead of February’s four-Test tour of India.
The recall of Steve O’Keefe for a twin-spin attack and inclusion of debutant batting all-rounder Hilton Cartwright gives Australia the look of a team getting an early start on preparations for a tour of the sub-continent.
Captain Smith, however, is well aware that little more than a month ago Australian cricket was in crisis after the home series loss to South Africa and his sights are firmly on victory and securing a 3-0 triumph over Pakistan.
“The selectors probably have an eye on India and the guys that are a possibility to be there,” Smith told reporters on Monday.
“(But) you can’t think too far ahead. The conditions are completely different, it’s a different kind of spin that you get out here compared to India.
“We’re just focused on this Test match at the moment, hopefully we can have a clean sweep.”
Misbah-ul-Haq was so upset by the nature of the innings and 18-run defeat in Melbourne - a loss that ended his hopes of leading Pakistan to a first ever tour triumph in Australia - that he considered retiring from Tests immediately.
The 42-year-old, who been considering hanging up his bat for more than a year and has scored only 20 runs in four innings in the series, ultimately decided to lead his country into the match but the end cannot be far away.
“You have to fight as a sportsman and that’s important for me also,” he said on Monday.
“Everyone, from the support staff to the players are up for that, so I’m also up. I need to play at my best.”
Pakistan will also be looking for better from another veteran batsman in Younis Khan to bolster a line-up that has shown a worrying fragility in their last few test matches.
As in Melbourne, the weather will be a factor with rain forecast at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) for all five days from Tuesday.
Head groundsman Tom Parker has promised a bit of traditional SCG turn, which is good news for O’Keefe and off-spinner Nathan Lyon but might also provide fitting conditions for Pakistan leg-spinner Yasir Shah to show the full range of his powers. SYDNEY: Australia plan to prepare for their Indian Test series in Dubai as team officials seek more control over the state of practice pitches, reports said Monday.
The tour to face the world’s number one side next month has been tagged the “closest thing to mission impossible” for Australia, who have not won a Test in India since 2004.
The staging camp at Dubai’s state-of-the-art International Cricket Council (ICC) Academy has been devised to help avoid a repeat of Australia’s disastrous 2013 series in India where they lost all four Tests.
“India is not going to be the same everywhere,” Cricket Australia’s high performance general manager Pat Howard told Fairfax Media.
“What they can do in Dubai is do a lot of different preparation with different types of pitches.”
The Dubai academy has two full-sized floodlit ovals and more than 30 grass pitches constructed on different soils from around the cricket world.
“The ICC have done a really good job where they’ll have different pitches of the cities... so it’s not just spin pitches, there are different types,” said Howard. “We cannot copy what we are going to get. It’s all about the mindset that we’re going to adapt. We can’t get practice
THIRD TEST Steven Smith’s men look to keep thoughts of India series away as they aim to whitewash Pakistan in Sydney The selectors probably have an eye on India and the guys that are a possibility to be there. (But) you can’t think too far ahead. The conditions are completely different, it’s a different kind of spin that you get out here compared to India.
That was 2016 now it’s 2017. That is gone, that is gone.You have to fight as a sportsman and that’s important for me also. Everyone, from the support staff to the players are up for that, so I’m also up. I need to play at my best.
against Ashwin and
Jadeja either.”
Australia’s team for Tuesday’s final Sydney Test against
Pakistan has been chosen with an eye on the four-Test India campaign and includes two spinners in Nathan
Lyon and Steve O’Keefe. Third spinner Ashton Agar was also in the 13-man squad but did not make the staring eleven.
England enjoyed similar preparations in the Gulf state ahead of their landmark 2-1 series win in India in 2012, while the West Indies also spent time at the academy before winning the World Twenty20 championship in India last year.
Teenager Lahiru Kumara claimed three wickets, including two in the same over, after he was brought into the side following Sri Lanka’s 206-run defeat in the first test in Port Elizabeth.
But the touring side will feel they did not take full advantage of the seamer-friendly track as they took as many wickets in the second two sessions as they had before lunch when South Africa were teetering on 69-3 after losing the toss and being put into bat. There was an immediate breakthrough before the home
team had scored a run with Stephen Cook, who made a century and was named man of the match in the first test, out to the fourth ball of the game. He pushed at a rising delivery from Lakmal and got a faint edge to Mendis.
The 19-year-old Kumara dismissed Hashim Amla and JP Duminy in the same over just before lunch.
Amla, continuing his indifferent form, was clean bowled for 29 and five balls later Duminy gloved a quick leg-side delivery to be caught for a duck after an acrobatic leap by Mendis.