Sydney: Eyeing a maiden Test series win in Australia, India will look to make the most of their only warm-up game, beginning here Wednesday against Cricket Australia XI (CA XI). The four-Test series starts in Adelaide December 6.
As is the wont of the Indian side, the match has not been accorded First-Class status, allowing all players of the touring party to participate in the game.
The CA XI is also a team-sheet of names inconsequential to the upcoming Test series, barring perhaps D’Arcy Short who was part of the recently concluded T20I series.
For India, this is a chance to get their game face on and also make the transition from white-ball to red-ball cricket for the final time this season.
After this series, there is a long limited-overs’ schedule until the 2019 ODI World Cup. But before focus turns to that quadrennial tournament, there is the small matter of preparing well for a last overseas Test series to be played this year.
After enjoying a day of rest post the tied T20I series, all travelling members were back in action as the Indian team trained hard for nearly three hours Tuesday to get back into long-form groove.
There were a couple noticeable pointers – Murali Vijay batting in tandem with KL Rahul, hinting at a possible reunion at the top of the order.
All primary batsmen had a long outing against left-arm throw-down specialist Nuwan Seneviratne, who is a recent import from Sri Lanka, in a bid to get used to this particular angle of delivery in anticipation of facing Mitchell Starc.
Primary amongst them was skipper Virat Kohli who started off proceedings with throw-downs and then quickly moved to the spin nets. This is seen as possible preparation against Nathan Lyon, with the Adelaide pitch anticipated to be a dry one like in 2014.
