Tour of Australia 2011-12        Captain: M S Dhoni

India's 67th Test tour

Tenth Test-playing tour of Australia by India

  (previous tour 2007-08)

On grassy pitches, poor batting against the swing and pace of Australia’s fast bowlers, Hilfenhaus, Siddle and Harris, saw the Indians lose the Test series 4-0, the same result they suffered against England in 2011, when all four Test matches were lost and India conceded its position as number one Test nation. This was their worst result in Australia for 45 years.

Although reigning World Cup champions, the tourists lost the one-day tri-series, too, but BCCI president Narayan Srinivasan saw no need for a formal inquiry into India's performances, and calls for the senior players to be discarded were ignored .

Former coach Greg Chappell accused the Indians of not really being interested in the Test matches on this tour and said that Test cricket was too hard for them.

Indian captain M S Dhoni was banned from the Adelaide (4th) Test after India were two overs short of the required over-rate in Perth. In his absence, Virender Sehwag captained the side in Adelaide.

Other Indian tours

Previous tour

England 2011

Next tour

 Sri Lanka 2012  Tests cancelled

Next Australian tour

2014-15

Members of the Test tour  party (17)

Opening batsmen: : Gautam Gambhir, Ajinkya Rahane, Virender Sehwag

Middle-order batsmen: Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma

Wicket-keepers: Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Wriddhiman Saha.

Spinners:  Ravichandran Ashwin, Pragyan Ojha

Fast bowlers:: Vinay Kumar, Ishant Sharma, Abhimanyu Mithun, Zaheer Khan, Umesh Yadav.

Representation of teams:  

Ba  -  Baroda (1)

Bn  -  Bengal (1)

D   -  Delhi (4)

Hd  -  Hyderabad (2)

Jk  -  Jharkhand (1)

K  -   Karnataka (3)

Mb  -  Mumbai (3)

TN  -  Tamil Nadu (1)

Vb  -   Vidarbha (1)

Average age of  team at time of first Test match

 (26 December 2011) :

      27 yrs  9 months

ODI: Member of one-day international squad for the Commonwealth Bank series.

Test Appearances made before the tour

Tendulkar 184,  Dravid 160,  Laxman 130,  Sehwag 92,  Zaheer 79,  Dhoni 64,  Gambhir 44,  I Sharma 41,  Ohja 14,  Kohli 4,  Mithun 4,  Ashwin 3,  Yadav 2,  Saha 1, Rahane 0, R Sharma 0, Vinay Kumar 0.

Team Officials

Shivlal Yadav, who appeared in 35 Test matches for India was currently a vice-president with the BCCI and the Hyderabad Cricket Association.  Eric Simons’ two-year contract was not renewed at the end of the tour and he was replaced as bowling coach by Australian Joe Dawes

Selectors

Krishnamachari Srikkanth (chairman),   Yashpal Sharma,  Narendra Hirwani,  Surendra Bhave and  Raja Venkat

Selection

Unavailable : Yuvraj Singh (lung tumour),  Sreesanth (toe injury).

Tour Party Announced: 26 November 2011.

Zaheer Khan was chosen subjuect to fitness tests on his ankle and hamstring.

Omitted :  Harbhajan Singh,  Rahul Sharma.

Withdrawals:  Praveen Kumar (fractured rib), Varun Aaron (back strain),

Replacements:  Abhimanyu Mithun (on 5 December for Praveen Kumar) and Vinay Kumar(on 9 December)

Limited-overs squad announced:  15 January 2012.  The team was picked in Chennai.

MS Dhoni (capt & wk), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Sachin Tendulkar, Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja, Manoj Tiwary, Parthiv Patel (wk), Zaheer Khan, Umesh Yadav, Irfan Pathan, R Vinay Kumar, Praveen Kumar, Rahul Sharma, R Ashwin.

Time between selection and departure from India

  16 days

 (26 November - 12 December)

Travel

Seven players -  Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Ishant Sharma, Pragyan Ojha, Umesh Yadav, V V S Laxman and Wriddhiman Saha -  left India five days in advance of the main party, departing from Mumbai on 8 December, to train in Melbourne, and to prepare for the tour. The new physio and fitness trainer accompanied them

The remaining players, including Dhoni and coach Duncan Fletcher, departed from Chennai on 12 December and landed in Australia on Tuesday night 13 December. They immediately left for Canberra for the first warm-up game. On the previous tour of Australia, the BCCI was criticised for arranging only one warm-up match, so in August the Board had asked for an extra preparatory game on this tour.

After the Test series Suresh Raina, Parthiv Patel, Manoj Tiwary, Ravindra Jadeja, Irfan Pathan, Rahul Sharma and Praveen Kumar were brought in for the limited-overs internationals.

Time spent in Australia

   81 days

(13 December - 3 March)

On-tour selection committee

Duncan Fletcher(coach),  M S Dhoni (captain),  Shivlal Yada (manager).

Reinforcements

Fixtures/Results

† not first-class

§  ODI - Commonwealth Bank tri-series.

⊕   T20 internationals

Time spent in Australia before First Test:

 13 days

(13 - 26 December)

Test appearances on tour

4  -   Dravid,  Gambhir,  Laxman,  Kohli,  Sehwag,  I Sharma,  Tendulkar,  Yadav,  Zaheer

3  -   Ashwin,  Dhoni

1 -    Saha,  Vinay Kumar

0 -     Mithun,  Ohja,  Rahane, RG Sharma.

Highlights

•    At Adelaide Virat Kohli scored India’s only Test century of the series (116).

•    New fast-medium bowler Yadav took 5 for 93 at Perth but that was the only high spot. The Test team’s bowling average was 51.11, the fifth worst in Test history (second worst being 58.45 in England in 2011 (source: cricinfo)

•    India’s eighth Test defeat abroad in a row was their second worst sequence, since losing 17 consecutive matches away from home between June 1959 (Trent Bridge) and January 1968 (Sydney).

•    . It was India’s eighth ‘whitewash’. Previous instances were 1959 and 1962 (5-Test series), 1967-68 and 2011 (4-Test series) and 1967, 1974, 1999-00 (3-Test series)

Tour Summary

Return to India

The following were not required for the one-day series: Rahul Dravid, V V S Laxman, Pragyan Ojha, Wriddhiman Saha, Ishant Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane.

 The team left for home on Saturday 3 March 2012.  The players with bases in Mumbai or southern India separated from the rest of the squad to take a morning flight  from Brisbane to Singapore where they divided into two groups:  Tendulkar, Zaheer, Rohit Sharma and Yadav as well as the support staff took a connecting flight to Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai while Ravichandran Ashwin flew on to Chennai.

Dhoni, Gambhir, Kohli, Sehwag, Raina, Praveen Kumar and Rahul Sharma took an afternoon flight from Brisbane on 3 March, also to Singapore and flew into Indira Gandhi International airport, New Delhi, on 4 March

Irfan Pathan and Parthiv Patel, with bases in Gujarat, left for home on 4 March

Time away from India

  83 days   (12 December to 4 March)

Finances