Australian team might have been rated as the favourite to win the Pink ball Test at Adelaide Oval starting today. Australian skipper Tim Paine went on to say that with team’s pacer Mitchell Starc is often a nightmare to face while spinner Nathan Lyon went on to claim that they have the world’s best bowling line-up.
However, former Australian spinner Gavin Robertson, who played 4 Test matches and 13 ODIs and made his Test debut against India in 1998, feels Aussie pace attack consisting of Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood are no match to their Indian counterparts Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami.
“But I think if you are talking about Cummins, Hazlewood and Starc for example. Do we own the seam as well as Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami? I’m going to be horrible here because the blokes I just mentioned, I love them, but no,” Robertson was quoted as saying by Australian website sen.com.au.
Following Indian pacers performance at the pink-ball warm-up in Sydney, the 54-year-old former off-spinner felt that the Indian pace duo will make life of Aussie batsmen difficult under the lights with the consistency with the seam they have.
“I just watched Jasprit Bumrah and also Mohammed Shami, watch how straight their seam is and that is going to be a problem with a pink ball, especially when it gets to 7 o’clock. That will be the difference, whoever bowls the greatest seam and cuts through,” Robertson said.
The former New South Wales cricketer further added that he can’t say Oz pacer are consistent enough to match Bumrah and Shami.
“Sometimes we can get wobbly, a little bit spaghetti-like and that is not good. Mohammed Shami blows me away and Bumrah is the surprise of cricket from the last two years,” he said.
Robertson, however, gave an edge to Nathan Lyon over R Ashwin.
“I think we’ve got them covered in regards to spin bowling,” he said. “I think Nathan Lyon has Ashwin covered.”
