Australia wary of slide spin!

Oz coach Andrew McDonald; (right) India off-spinner R Ashwin during the second Test against New Zealand at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium in 2021. Pic/PTI

Australia head coach Andrew McDonald believes the biggest challenge for his side in the upcoming Border-Gavaskar Test Trophy will be to tackle "slide spin" from the Indian tweakers in the early overs.

As the tourists got down to the business of preparing for the gruelling four-Test series beginning in Nagpur on February 9, McDonald also warned his batters that they will have to come up with individual methods and techniques to counter the sliding deliveries.

The Australians have chosen to train all by themselves instead of playing tour games as they feel practice matches serve little purpose. Both McDonald and Steve Smith have said that serving green tops for tour games and spinning tracks for actual games defeat the very purpose of playing practice matches.

"The new ball is the one that creates more of that slide and when the batters do get done on the inside... we're preparing for that [at the preparatory camp]," McDonald had said before the team's departure for Bangalore on Wednesday.

Also read: Australia pacer Mitchell Starc out of Nagpur Test

On Thursday, cricket.com.au re-tweeted images of the squad training at Alur, clicked by its journalist, which showed the touring party batters going about their paces in the nets. "That slide spin, we'll expect the spinners to bowl early against our opening batters as well with the new ball so all that is taken care of in the training environment and [batting coach] Diva [Michael Di Venuto] does a fantastic job in preparing. "The key to success there is to have a clear method and that will be individually based and depending on the conditions we're confronted with," McDonald was quoted as saying by Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday.

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