Michael Clarke lists out ‘major mistakes’ made by Australia during ongoing India tour

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Team India retain the Border Gavaskar Trophy in fabulous fashion after dominating Australia in the second Test of the series. After the hosts won the first game in Nagpur quite comfortably, India repeated the same performance in Delhi as well. After Australia fought back in the first innings, the visitors fell to the bowling attack of India in the second innings and lost the game.

Former Australia skipper Michael Clarke recently came forward to talk about the mistakes made by Australia that led to them losing the two matches. Clarke also opined that the decision not to play any tour games prior to the start of the series came back to hurt the Aussies as they did not get enough time to prepare themselves for the conditions.

“I’m not surprised by what I’m seeing because we didn’t have a tour game. Major, major, major mistake. There should have been at least one game over there to get used to the conditions,” Clarke said on the Big Sports Breakfast podcast.

“Selection for the first Test, major, major mistake. Second Test, blokes sweeping, we saw enough of that the first Test match. They’re not the right conditions to sweep when you start your innings. And they’re never going to be the right conditions to reverse sweep against the spin at the start of your innings,” he added.

Clarke questions Pat Cummins’ field placements in second Test

Australia got off to a decent start in the second Test, thanks to the knocks of Usman Khawaja and Peter Handscomb, and were able to notch up 263 runs on the scoreboard in the first innings. It was the second innings where things went bad for the visitors, as they only managed 113 runs in the second innings.

Team India chased the target with six wickets in hand, which led to Clarke questioning the field placement put in by Pat Cummins.

“I’m not sure what happened with our tactics. We had just 100 runs on the board. At one stage, Patty Cummins had four blokes on the boundary. There’s 2½ days left in the Test match. You’re either bowling India out for under a hundred or you’re losing: one or the other,” Clarke said.