Australia head coach speaks out on India's significant defeat before BGT: 'Their strength should not be underestimated'

While India has maintained an unbeaten streak in Test series against Australia for the past decade, the recent loss at home to New Zealand has dealt a blow to their confidence ahead of the upcoming tour Down Under. Adding to their woes, India had to make the tough decision to exclude pacer Mohammed Shami from their squad for the tour, which was a setback even before the defeat in the second Test in Pune was confirmed.

Shami is yet to regain full fitness after an ankle surgery earlier this year. He missed a Ranji Trophy match that he was scheduled to play and that finally led to him being excluded from the squad for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

Australia head coach Andrew McDonald said that he expects the absence of Shami to be a big one for India. "Mohammed Shami is a big loss," said McDonald on ABC's Offsiders. “The way our batters speak about his relentless nature, his line and lengths, the way he goes about his business, a real good complimenting skill set to (Jasprit) Bumrah so think that one-two combo they'll lack a little bit, and they'll miss that.”

Shami, Bumrah and Ishant Sharma formed the pace trio that bludgeoned the Australians into submission during the 2018/19 tour, in which India became the first team to beat them in a Test series Down Under. However, Shami was also ruled out after the first Test of the 2020/21 tour which India lost by 10 wickets after being all-out for 36 runs. He was one of many senior players who got injured over the course of the tour and India still ended up winning the series 2-1.

McDonald said that the memory of the second tour is still fresh in the minds of the Australians and they are aware of the threat even India's reserves carry. “But needless to say we saw what happened last time, they had reserves that came in and did the job as well so they cannot be underestimated at all,” he said.

India's fast bowlers for the tour which starts on November 22 are Bumrah, who is also vice-captain to Rohit Sharma, Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana and all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy, with the latter two earning their maiden Test call-up. Additionally, they have three spin allrounders R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar.