Chennai: Australian captain Michael Clarke has decided to go with a lone spinner in Nathan Lyon against India in the first Test and believes that one needs “courage” to stick to their plans irrespective of whether you are bowling spin or facing it.
“Playing spin bowlers is no different to playing fast bowling. You need to have the courage to stick to that plan whether you make zero or 100. Sometimes it works well and sometimes it does not. Now we are going to try our best. That is for sure,” Clarke told mediapersons on the eve of first Test.
On not having a second specialist spinner, he answered,”I have made plenty of mistakes before and enough to say before making another mistake. But, the focus is to pick the members to have best success. And if that does not work, we reassess for the next Test matches.”
“After the first Test, [England] brought on Panesar and they had huge impact. So, you have to learn from how teams had their successes in the sub-continent to be sure. But like I said it is silly to say that we should play like some body else. We will play our brand of cricket and stick to our strengths,” Clarke reiterated.
“When selecting your team, you have to pick the best attack and not the best individual bowlers. We have picked a team that will have success under the available conditions here.” (PTI)