‘How does question even arise’: Ganguly’s emphatic take on IND’s BGT preparation

Former India captain Sourav Ganguly has rubbished worries about the team’s preparedness for the upcoming Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia. India’s 10-year dominance of the trophy, which includes an unprecedented two consecutive wins in Australia, had already provided a lot of spice ahead of the five-match Test series that starts on Friday. That has only been scaled up with India being subjected to a historic 3-0 whitewash at home by New Zealand at home and a few injury scares before the first Test in Perth.
“Undercooked is a term used when you haven’t played any Test cricket at all. They have just played five Tests in last seven weeks so how does the question even arise?” Ganguly is quoted as saying by PTI. Much of the worries over India’s batters, in particular, possibly not being prepared enough stems from their abject failure against the Kiwi spinners at home.
Ganguly, however, feels that the defeat to New Zealand won’t have much of an effect on India during he series in Australia. “I can understand that the defeat against New Zealand was unexpected but you have to understand we played on some extremely difficult tracks. In Australia, the tracks will be good for batting,” Ganguly said.
The 52-year-old, who captained India 49 Tests between 2000 and 2005, further said that while he doesn’t think there will be any mental impact of the series defeat, India should get back to playing on good pitches at home. “We should stop this habit of playing on rank turners. The batsmen lose confidence on such tracks and we have a team which can win Test matches on good tracks.
“Also on turners, you need to learn to grind before you can attack. There are two types of tracks where you can’t just hit through the line and get out of trouble. One is a seaming track and other being a rank turner,” he said.