Winning tossbigfactorinIndiawin
After calling correctly just once in South Africa series, skipper Kohli won the toss thrice in Australia
SYDNEY:A hugely significant reason for India’s win in Australia was their success at the toss. India won just one of the eight tosses in South Africa and England but won three out of four in Australia.
Since the start of 2017, toss winners have won roughly the same proportion of Tests as home teams; in other words, home advantage equates toss advantage. The large majority of the toss winners elect to bat first, get ahead in the game and build an unassailable first innings lead from which the chasing team cannot recover. This is exactly what happened in each of the first three Tests and would almost certainly have happened in Sydney had rain not forced a draw.
The only Test India won in South Africa came when they won the toss; the only Test India won in England came when England won the toss but elected to field and the only Test India lost in Australia came when they lost the toss.
There were many cricketing reasons behind why India beat Australia but luck at the toss was also a significant factor.
BETTER ALL-ROUND GAME
Using CricViz’s Expected Analysis, which assesses the quality of bowling based purely on ball tracking data, it is clear that India outperformed Australia with bat and ball.
According to Expected Analysis we expected India’s bowlers to average 28.00 runs per wicket and Australia’s to average 30.80 which suggests India bowled marginally better than Australia. In reality Australia’s bowlers averaged 34.69 and India’s bowlers averaged 25.90 which means India’s batsmen exceeded our expectations based on the balls they faced from Australia by +3.89 runs per wicket and Australia’s batsmen under-performed based on the balls they faced by -2.10 runs per wicket.
India were better in both departments and were deserving winners.
BATTING LINEUP SUPERIOR TO AUSSIES
A central reason for India’s better performance with the bat was quite simply that they appeared to have better batsmen. Before the start of the series only one Indian batsman had a lower first class average than the Australian batsman with the highest first class average
The gap in first-class averages for this series was at a historic high.
For the Boxing Day Test, India’s top seven averaged 49.98 or better in first-class cricket coming into the Test. That is the second best of any team ever; only in Don Bradman’s final Test have the top seven of a Test team all entered the match averaging more than 50 in first-class cricket.
The vast discrepancy in runscoring pedigree was clearly apparent. While Australia’s highest score was 79 India had three different centurions and a total of five hundreds.
The contrasting performances of top-order batsmen was significant given the comparative ability of each team’s lower order. In India’s series against England, the dominance of England’s lower order in a series when the top order generally struggled was a key difference between the two teams. In this series, the strength of India’s top order and the weaknesses of Australia’s minimised the importance of lower order batting.
DEFENSIVE BATTING AGAINST PACE
More specifically the crucial difference between the two teams’ batting was their defensive games against pace. Across the series, 64% of overs were bowled by the quicks. India were led by Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane in this regard. Pujara averaged 152 defensive shots per dismissal against pace while neither Kohli—across 130 shots—nor Rahane—across 77 shots—were dismissed playing a defensive shot against pace. Mayank Agarwal’s 104 defensive shots per dismissal was also excellent. The only Australian batsmen who could match these levels of solidity were Marcus Harris with 129 defensive shots and no dismissals and Tim Paine with 87 defensive shots and no dismissals.
NEGOTIATING BOUNCE BETTER
One of the biggest challenges associated with playing in Australia is negotiating the extra bounce.
A comparison of Australia’s and India’s batting against pace by bounce shows that as expected India outperformed Australia against balls that bounced at stump height but against balls that bounced above the stumps India returned better figures than Australia.
QUICKS OUTPERFORMED AUSTRALIA’S
India’s bowling prowess was the product of their pace bowlers. The spinners on each side matched each other in terms of Expected Average but India’s quicks had a significantly better Expected Average.
The strength of India’s pace attack was one of the main reason why this series was considered to be such a good opportunity for the visitors and the quicks didn’t disappoint. In every metric except average speed India’s pace bowlers outperformed Australia’s.
The phase of the innings in which India’s quicks clearly dominated Australia’s was with the old ball – specifically overs 41 to 80. In this period India averaged 23.62 runs per wicket while Australia averaged 42.50.
SOLID FOOTWORK AGAINST SPIN
Another key difference between the two teams was their contrasting methods against spin. Although the conditions didn’t greatly assist spinners, the quality of spin bowlers in the series was high and negotiating their overs safely was key, especially with the pacers posing such a threat.
Across the series Australia averaged 29.40 against spin while India averaged 36.57.
While India appeared to have clear plans to counter Nathan Lyon, either skipping down the track to the pitch of the ball or getting a big stride forward to hit him off his length, Australia either didn’t have such plans or were unable to execute them against India’s spinners.
Key to batting against spin is getting well forward or going well back and minimising interception points between two and three metres from the stumps within which batting averages in Test cricket drop to 29.46 compared to 72.54 further forward or further back than that.
A comparison of the interception points against spin shows Australia intercepted 59% of deliveries in the danger zone compared to 49% for India. The global average is 57%.
India, as you’d expect from a subcontinental team, were superb against spin; Aussies were mediocre and against a team with a pace attack as good as India’s they couldn’t afford to cede ground to spinners as well.