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India looms as a severe examination of Australia’s relationship to spin | Sam Perry

Nathan Lyon
Nathan Lyon could open the bowling in the first Test in Pune, but the spotlight will equally be on Australia’s batsmen during their tour of India. Photograph: Marty Melville/AFP/Getty Images

The image still burns. Looking like a weary uncle concocting his own dismissal in the backyard, Usman Khawaja stood prone in Galle, with all but his eyes seemingly paralysed as a straight Dilruwan Perera delivery cannoned into his stumps. It was perhaps unfair to Khawaja, but the moment came to signify the haplessness of Australia’s attempts to compete with Asian spin. Later on, Steve Smith would single out his own spinners for failure to conjure something similar.

Now, rationally, honourable losses appear the best case for the visitors in India, even if belief in Australian cricketing exceptionalism does die hard. Some propose that they should just do what they did in 2004: to confine spin to the periphery and instead send down 140km reverse-swingers outside off stump with men on the boundary; to impose themselves with the bat and “not let the bowlers settle”; and so on. Maybe Mitch Marsh’s fourth stump line and straight bombs really are the key. Or maybe, India looms as a severe examination of Australia’s relationship to spin, both bowling and facing it.

Marginalised characters in the home narrative, Australia’s spinners are now central to its fortunes away from it. Not only must they dismantle Indian batsmen who seem to put up Space Jam-like numbers, they will also bear the brunt of home consternation if they fail to do so. These are turning wickets, aren’t they? “Where’s our Ashwin and Jadeja?” we will inevitably ask.

“Players that bowl with that sub continental style get taken out of the game here,” says former Test off spinner Jason Krejza. Speaking to the Guardian, Krejza notes the major disparity between how spin is traditionally served up in both countries. In short, what succeeds at home is what fails away, and vice versa.

“Our wickets just don’t turn,” he says. “We talk a lot about overspin with a little bit of sidespin because that’s the only way we’re going to be able to turn it here. The Indians undercut the ball. If you do that in Australia you’ll bowl straight and you’ll get whacked.” The analysis speaks of a quasi-catch 22 for Australian spinners with international aspirations. To earn the opportunity to bowl on an Indian spinning paradise, players must succeed with an overspinning craft that manifestly collapses in the Asian arena.

The same appears to apply with the blade. Ed Cowan, who faced the second-highest number of deliveries for Australia on its last tour to India, tells of the complete technical overhaul he, and most, require to survive an Asian tour.

“The basics of what they do are so different to what we do to play spin,” he says. “We’re always taught to defend straight down the wicket. They’re taught to defend with an open bat, and hit the ball much later. In Australia you play spin off the front foot and you hit through the line. Over there you do the opposite: you play off the back foot and you hit the ball after it’s turned, in the direction it’s turning.”

The contrasting relationship to spin even pervades the minutiae of warm-ups, where Krejza observes a fundamental difference in the way players from both countries prepare on match day. “We watched them warm up,” Krejza says, “and they flick spinners at each other on the rough outfields and the ball goes everywhere. They have no pads on and they figure out a way to adjust. What do we do? We just have throwdowns and half volleys or lob little underarms and use our feet to balls that aren’t spinning.”

However, after the horror of Sri Lanka, it appears Australia is open to exploring orthodoxy beyond its own. Last week Cricket Australia hosted 20 young spinners at its centre of excellence in Brisbane, set to a theme of “adapting”. “It was undoubtedly a result of what’s happened to us in Asia,” says John Davison, Australian spin coach and a senior coach at Queensland. Davison, who many feel should be accompanying the current quintet of Australian spinners in India, devised the camp which saw players encouraged to modify their bowling according to specially made wickets. Nevertheless, he recognises a number of emerging challenges for promising Australian spinners, specifically at grade, or premier, level.

“At grade level, the challenge is you’re playing on a day one wicket every game,” Davison says. “There’s probably only a small few wickets in each state that offer some assistance, so the hardest thing for spinners here is to become match winners – to have that belief that they can win games for their teams.”

Compounding spinners’ difficulty at home is diminishing collective wisdom at club level. Anecdotally, very few clubs retain players willing to commit into their 30s and beyond, resulting in a gradual fading of institutional knowledge, particularly when it comes to spin.

“There is a lack of mentors in the club scene now,” says Davison. “There are not too many guys who are 30-plus who are still getting around and mentoring young players. Spinners in particular are such a minority in a team – they need to learn from someone.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of spin knowledge around. Unless you’ve toured the subcontinent and played against really good spinners then, as a coach, how are you getting this knowledge? If your professional players who have toured there don’t come back and play club cricket too often, then how’s that knowledge being passed down through the system? It’s a pretty rare occurrence.”

Though according to Kerry O’Keeffe, the worm is turning. The former Australian legspinner currently assists the NSW development squad, a battalion of 10 batsmen, six fast bowlers and three spinners. He sees an approach to playing spin bowling that is not bound by old convention. “‘What I noticed in my sessions with these young spinners is that batsmen were encouraged to hang in the crease and play off the pitch, like Younis and Misbah do in the UAE,” O’Keeffe says. “Rather than just launch spinners off the front foot, there is a swell rising that you’ve got to be able to play subcontinentally.”

While Australia appear to have made notional strides towards better meeting their Asian opponents, one wonders whether the Everest of India is a summit that’s furthering than nearing. For both spinners and players of spin alike, the incentive to continually break and re-build ones technique in pursuit of rare Test victories may not be worth the risk, particularly if you can simply succeed at home and make Twenty20 money otherwise.