IND vs AUS 1st Test: The historic India vs Australia series aka the Border Gavaskar Trophy is underway. India are the defending champions of the title and they will try their level best to outplay the visitors. As far as the Indian tours and conditions go, the visitors have always been intimidated by the conditions over here, the spinning conditions and they try to do their best to counter it. Ahead of the first Test match that is being played in Nagpur, a lot was spoken about the pitch by the Australian team management and the media.
The Australian team had tough selection calls to take, especially after Cameron Green failed to recover from his finger injury. To everybody's surprise, Pat Cummins and the Australian team management decided to leave their regular batter Travis Head out. This selection call hasn't gone down too well with many, especially former Australian skipper Steve Waugh.
Steve Waugh reacted to the matter and said:
Hard to believe that we can drop the number 4 ranked Test batsman in the world and probably our best batsman in the last 12 months, plus he bowls better than average off-spin. Let's wait and see, maybe the Aussie selectors are genius
As of today, Head has played 33 Test matches. In 51 innings, Head has scored 2126 runs. He has faced 3477 balls and has scored at a strike rate of 61.14. Head averages 45.23 in the longest format of the game. Head was drafted into the Australian Test team after the 'sandpaper gate' in 2018. The left-handed batter debuted against Pakistan in 2018 and since then he has never looked back.
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India XI: Rohit Sharma(c), KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Srikar Bharat(w), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj
Australia XI: David Warner, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Steven Smith, Matt Renshaw, Peter Handscomb, Alex Carey(w), Pat Cummins(c), Nathan Lyon, Todd Murphy, Scott Boland
