India batting great and former captain Sunil Gavaskar has said that the team's decision to cancel a scheduled practice match in Australia ahead of their first Test of the five-match series for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy “beggars belief”. India were originally scheduled to play a warm-up game against India A at the WACA before their first Test starts on November 22 at Perth Stadium. However, captain Rohit Sharma said that they have instead chosen to concentrate on match simulation in the nets, which means that Day 1 of the first Test will be the first time they play any kind of competitive cricket on the tour.

Moreover, this comes right after India were stunningly whitewashed by New Zealand in a three-match Test series at home, an unprecedented result on multiple levels that threw their journey to the World Test Championship final off track. Apart from the cancelled practice match, a scheduled warm-up against the Australia Prime Minister's XI before the second Test has also been truncated.

“For Indian cricket’s sake (I hope) whoever has taken the call to do away with the warm-up game and then reduce the match between the first and second Test against the Australian Prime Minister’s XI to two days will be proven right,” Gavaskar wrote in his column for Mid-Day.

‘Temperamentally, it’s never going to be the same’

Gavaskar said that the batters probably needed that practice game in Australia considering the way they failed at home against New Zealand. "To be fair, the Indians did score over 400 in the second innings (of the first Test) in Bangalore, but after that, in four innings they looked utterly clueless against a spin attack that by no stretch of imagination was so dangerous that India couldn’t chase 150 in the fourth innings. Yes, there was turn on offer, but again the pitches were not impossible to play on," he said.

"That is why the cancellation of the team’s warm-up game in Perth against the India ‘A’ team beggars belief. There is no better feeling for a batter to spend time out in the centre and feel the ball hit the middle of the bat. No amount of net practice is ever going to replace that feeling of flow and bat speed that one gets even after a short stay at the crease."

Gavaskar further says that the fact that batters know they cannot bat once they are dismissed in a practice match is among the things that make it more important than a nets session. "Yes, there’s a possibility that the ‘A’ team new ball bowlers may not go flat out because of the worry of injuring a key batter, but that’s more likely to happen in the nets where the pitches are usually not as well prepared as in a match and where the bowlers bowl no-balls without any repercussion. The batters know that in the nets they can be dismissed three or more times and yet continue to bat and then play with no tension or pressure at all. So temperamentally, it’s never going to be the same as playing in a proper match," he said.

"For the bowlers too, getting into a proper rhythm with run-up and get confident about not overstepping is crucial. What line and length to bowl is also something that one can learn in a proper game and not in the nets."

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