My money is on India, says Jeff Thomson ahead of India’s tour of Australia

11/02/2018

Former Australian fast bowler Jeff Thomson has stated that India would have an easy win in the Test series against Australia given the improved quality of the side. Thomson also went on to state that it was former captain Steve Waugh, who started Australia’s sledging culture back in 1991.

Since independence, India havewent on to play as many as eleven Test series against Australia down under, managing to lose eight of them and drawing three. However, Jeff Thomson has been of the opinion that India’s chances of changing history have significantly increased with the improving cricketing standard of India under the captaincy of Virat Kohli.

“My money is on India. It’s a very solid team and has improved considerably. Over the years fielding has improved a lot. Both batting and bowling has been at the top and India should steamroll Australia in the Test series,” said Thomson during a press conference at the Ekamra Sports LitFest in Bhubaneswar, reported Scroll.

Apart from the off-field storm that the recent report has caused alleging Australian Cricket of breeding bad culture for years, the side’s form o-field hasn’t been inspiring of as well. After losing the Test series 1-0 against Pakistan and getting whitewashed by them in the T20I series, Thomson has stated that India could be a very difficult opponent for them.

“The current team is losing to Pakistan and they will now play South Africa. India is the only good series. But their footwork against Pakistan was too bad and no technique to play Test cricket. All they know is to smack the ball and that is because of T20 cricket,” he said.

India’s biggest hope going into the Australian tour would of course be skipper Virat Kohli, who has five centuries there and averages a decent 62 in the longest format. However, apart from him, the England tour has exploited most of the other chinks in India’s batting armour and Thomson has been hoping Australian bowlers do the same.

“Kohli is a good batsman, plays cricket the hard way and puts in a lot of effort. He is a great batter. No, he can’t [win the series alone]. You need a lot of help from the team and he has a great bunch of players. I hope the rest of the team plays as hard he does. It’s not easy to bowl out a batsman of quality and Kohli is great. For me, let them not score in the first over they face. They will be frustrated for that time and play a bad shot after playing that over. It’s the way to get them out. I think Kohli will not play a bad shot because he’s good but others may,” he explained.

Steve Waugh has come out in recent weeks claiming that it was Cricket Australia’s fault that led on the bad culture within the team for a long time that eventually led to this. However, Thomson was quick to argue that it was Waugh who had first started the culture sledging on-field.

“I never sledged and we used to avoid those things. But back in 1991 when Waugh was there, he used to mouth a lot. His team had some of the biggest names and it began with that team. It has been happening for long and not the first time. But what they did to Smith and Warner was bad. No cricketer should be banned for 12 months from cricket. It was just bad handling of the incident,” he concluded.

My money is on India, says Jeff Thomson ahead of India’s tour of Australia

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