‘That’s not good for cricket. ICC needs to step in here’: Australia great blasts ‘pathetic’ India act in Nagpur

Australia suffered a humiliating defeat in the first Test of the Border-Gavaskar series against India, losing by an innings and 123 runs in Nagpur.

The loss cleared highlighted Australia’s struggle against spin. In bid to bounce back, the Pat Cummins-led side sought to learn more about Nagpur’s VCA Stadium and hence had planned to have a practice session before they left for New Delhi, for the second Test.

But their plans scuppered by local curators, leaving Australia great Ian Healy fuming at India’s “pathetic” act as he called for an intervention from the ICC.

Cricket Australia revealed that hours before Australia’s practice session in Nagpur, the team were forced to cancel after finding out that the pitch was watered on the previous day. A member of the VCA Stadium was spotted hosing down the track moments after India had wrapped up the first Test on Saturday.

Speaking on SEN on Monday, former Australia wicketkeeper Healy was left furious as he called the act “pathetic”.

“It’s really embarrassing the scuppering of our plans to get some practice sessions on that Nagpur wicket,” Healy said. “That’s not good, that’s just not good for cricket. The ICC needs to step in here. For them to water the wicket unceremoniously when it was requested for practice is horrible and that has to improve.”

Earlier, Australia coach Andrew McDonald had told SEN that the practice session was not “naughty boy nets” but an a chance for the visitors to adapt to the “extreme” conditions.

“It’s pretty clear isn’t it, their intent with the surfaces they want to play on. We were expecting that coming in so as I said before, we’ve been really clear on what we expected,” he said.

“When we got here we got exactly that. They’re not naughty boy nets today (the planned session). We’ve got a big squad of 17 players so there’s different people on different training programs. There’ll be a couple of players from the game that will come down, so they’ll be seen at training. But it’s certainly not naughty boy nets, it’s just preparing for the next game.”

Meanwhile, Australia called in left-arm spinner Matt Kuhnemann immediately after the first Test, in place of Mitchell Swepson, who headed home for the birth of his first child.

The second Test will begin from February 17 onwards.