‘Chopra always shielded the middle order from new ball’

Hobart: Bowling coach Bruce Reid has become a huge admirer of the Indian team and believes other Test nations could learn a lot from them.

“I was so impressed with their mindset. There is much to learn from the Indians for other Test nations,” Reid said. The former Aussie star gave an eye-witness account of what cooked in the team meetings and inside the visitors’ dressing room as they nearly toppled the world champions from their lofty perch. “They were just not worried about individual reputations. They just played as they saw it. At team meetings they barely mentioned the names of the Australian bowlers.

“They played each ball as they saw it, but it was irrelevant who bowled it. I know they rated Jason Gillespie very highly, but they felt the more they talked the bowlers up the more of an issue they would become so they hardly spoke of them,” Reid said, referring to the success of the Indian batsmen on the tour.

“When coach John Wright tried to teach his players how to play spin they laugh at him. They just don’t rate it tthat you should use your bat all the time against spin and it seems to get them in far less trouble. All of them play that way. They just try to avoid pad play.”

Reid found Indians less worked up about their techniques even though some of them possessed the best-organised methods to play pace or spin bowling. “For all their technical mastery, the Indian batsmen backed their instincts and were not overtly obsessed about making technical adjustments to cope with conditions and pitches.

“They never got technical about things at all. In the nets, you would never hear them talking about their backlift or where their top hand was. They just played.”

The Indians were not concerned about green pitches, said Reid, and they were markedly different from other teams who go into a psychological shell even before they pad up on Australian wickets. “They just didn’t worry at all whether the wickets were fast or slow or whatever. It was the same with practice wickets,” Reid said.

“I’ve played in teams who have whinged about practice wickets but it never worried the Indians. They’d just go in and have bash and not worry.”

Reid believes one of the unsung heroes in the Test series was Akash Chopra who nearly always played out the new ball shielding the middle-order batsmen. “He never made a 50 in the Tests but you cannot underestimate the role he played in sticking around to protect Rahul Dravid from the new ball.

“It just made a huge difference and it’s been a long time since any openers have done as well in Australia. He is so gutsy.”