Australia fret as Kohli’s India eye their chance

SYDNEY: With Austral ian cricket still reeling from the wrecking ball that was the Cape Town ball- tampering scandal, India appear to have been handed a golden opportunity to secure a first test series triumph Down Under over the next month.

Winning on Australia’s sunbaked tracks is still among the toughest propositions in cricket, however, so Virat Kohli’s team will have to be at their best with both bat and ball to forge the breakthrough even given the propitious circumstances.

Kohli leads a side bristling with brilliant batting talent, not least his own, but that has also been true of many of the 11 previous Indian touring parties that have left Australia empty-handed over the last 70 years.

The man who would have been Kohli’s opposite number, and who the Indian recently replaced as the top- ranked batsman in the world, will not face so much as a single delivery during the series, which starts at Adelaide Oval on Thursday. — Reuters