Guwahati: Former India coach Ravi Shastri bluntly stated that India should aim to win the series as they are playing under home circumstances as they prepare for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy match against Australia.
This is Australia’s first Test trip of India since India prevailed in a hard-fought series 2-1 in 2017.
India defeated Australia in both of its most recent Border-Gavaskar Trophy matches, each time by a score of 2-1, in 2018–19 and 2020–21.
The four-match Test series will begin in Nagpur on Thursday and India will have to make some interesting selections.
Shastri also asserts that India’s objective in 2023 ought to be to utterly humiliate the visitors, who are currently placed first in the ICC Test Rankings, in addition to winning the series.
“India should look to win 4-0, we’re playing at home. I’m brutal. I’ve been to two tours of Australia, I know what’s happened,” Shastri said in The ICC Review.
“My mindset would be, ‘How can I beat Australia 4-0 if I’m the coach’, which means day one, I want a ball to pitch on leg stump and hit off stump. I want it to rip. If someone asks me what kind of pitch? Expect that. If you lose the toss, expect the ball to turn in the first session of play. That’s what I want, and take it from there,” he added.
Shubman Gill’s remarkable performance in white-ball cricket has strengthened his case for an opening place in the first Test against Australia, even if he doesn’t move up into the middle order.
“Shubman or Rahul depends on the team management, what they think. Obviously, you’d want to go with what you’ve been doing in the past, but form becomes critical. You know, someone’s hitting it real sweet and it’s coming out of the centre of the bat. Then, you know, you wake up, and say, ‘listen’,” Shastri said.
Shastri also believes that whether Gill is selected depends depend on if vice-captain KL Rahul or Gill appear more poised to begin the batting.
“I’d have been watching Gill and KL Rahul very closely in the nets. Very closely. If it’s a hard call; when I see footwork when I see the timing as to who is batting better. If it has to be Shubman ahead of Rahul, so be it. You know, straight. You have to see that. I won’t say that KL Rahul is the vice-captain so he becomes the automatic choice,” said the former India coach.
“It can happen. It happened once in my tenure when I was a coach in Sri Lanka. There was a series that happened in India, and there were two openers. And, you know, they wanted to persevere with one. I took over and then I just saw the form of Shikhar Dhawan in the nets, and he was red-hot straight after the Champion’s Trophy in England. So we picked him and he got 190 in that game, and the rest is history,” Shastri added.
The Border-Gavaskar series is set to begin on Thursday as the team lead by Rohit Sharma aims to qualify for the ICC World Test Championship final which will begin on June 7.