Ranchi, Bengaluru could be different, Sriram tells Oz

Subhash Rajta

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Tribune News Service

Pune, February 27

It’s clear that Australia have done their homework for the India tour. They have come with certain plans, but they know that they may need to change them from session to session, venue to venue throughout the tour. And helping them adapt to different conditions with his knowledge of the local conditions and his crucial inputs is former India player Sridharan Sriram, their spin consultant. He knows what worked in Pune may not work in Bengaluru, or Ranchi, and hence he wants his wards to be flexible, open-minded and ready to adapt on the go.

On the go

“India is such a big country, there’s no one-stop solution,” said Sriram today. “If you say ‘this will work’, it is not going to work. So you have just got to adapt on the go. You have got to see what works for you on that day.”

And his role in helping the Aussies, especially the spinners, to adapt on the go is going to be pretty crucial. He proved that in the first Test when he took out Steve O’Keefe for a small net session during lunch on the second day and the left-arm spinner ran through the Indian side in the post-lunch session.

Be adaptable

So what did he tell the spinners going into the first Test? “Be adaptable, be open, and the wickets will take care of themselves,” he said. “That’s the mindset they came in this Test with — to be patient, to dry out the runs and to just play on the patience of the Indian batsmen.”

The former Tamil Nadu all-rounder sounded quite pleased with the preparations Australia had made for the series. “During the camp in Dubai, we prepared different tracks,” said the 41-year-old who played eight ODIs for India in the early 2000s. “We made a rough, we made rank turners, and we made slow and low pitches. I think it was a great preparation in terms of trying different surfaces and being prepared for whatever you get.”

Prepared this time

Despite sounding absolutely impressed with the preparations and the strategies the Aussies devised before arriving in India, Sriram didn’t get into the specifics. “All I can say is that the Australian batsmen were prepared this time. They worked a lot on their defence and scoring options,” he said.

However, he was quick to remind that the Australians might need to discard old plans and learn and devise new ones. “As I said, in India there’s no one way. You’ve got to go there, assess the conditions, see what suits you on that day,” he said. “See, Bengaluru could be totally different, Ranchi could be totally different... What we can take away from the first Test is that we adapted on the go, and we should look to do that throughout the series.”

Steeve O’ Keefe like a Hyundai i30: Panesar

"When I first saw him, he (Steeve O’ Keefe) asked me: ‘what do you think of my spin bowling?’ I said to him, ‘you’re like a Hyundai i30”. “‘You’re very much unassuming. You’re reliable. You get from A to B and you get the job done’. I remember telling (the team management) before they left for India, I said ‘I feel like O’Keefe will have the most impact’." Monty Panesar, who was hired by cricket Australia to work with the team’s spinners