It was Allan Border who called it the ‘‘last frontier’’. Steve Waugh had similar thoughts, and images of Glenn McGrath bowling Rahul Dravid in Bangalore are sill etched in the mind. Even the sight of rugged Michael Kasprowicz walking at Chennai ran counter to all notions of hard rockface Oz character. Does it mean that Adam Gilchrist’s famous walk in the CWC03 semi-final against Sri Lanka has created a culture of responsibility within the team? Perhaps it introduced the human face to the game Down Under, though just what Ricky Ponting will make of it is another matter. What it does signify is a change in the way modern Australian teams look upon a tour of the subcontinent, a country as vast as India with its spread of population, cultures and fanaticism. They have come to understand what passion for the game is and have revelled in such conditions. They would also admit being lucky not to be going to Nagpur the series levelled at 1-1. The last five teams to India have lost a series and each time a captain chafes over the result. Yet the ability to delve into the confidence levels and come up with match-winning performances cannot be overlooked. Michael Clarke went about restructuring the first innings at Bangalore with the sort of flamboyance you might expect of a Keith Miller, plenty of flair and strokes of a man on a mission. He knew what he was about, what the game was about, knew the challenges and the need for that first win. Australia achieved that in 2000/01 but came undone in the cauldron that is Eden Gardens and Chennai. Clarke is probably not a walker, but that does not lessen his batting ability. From the time he set about reviving the Australian innings, to be joined by Gilchrist, it was a matter of shouldering the responsibility and building a match-winning total. And that’s what it is all about: the need to bat once and place pressure on the opposition. Be as confrontational as possible, but be fair about it. The way McGrath delivered his opening spell added to the Clarke ethic. He hit the right length and always looked like getting a wicket, without — in some cases — the help of the umpire. Added to this was his ability to work out the right length at a new venue — which says a lot about his smart thinking and how others can learn from him. Fanie de Villiers once suggested that the secret in bowling the right length in India is to have batsmen uncertain of the line you are bowling. It is designed to cause doubt in their minds, creating confusion among those who will be following. McGrath, lounging around in the dressing-room, no doubt studied the bowling lengths of Irfan, Harbhajan and Kumbli. You are not going to get a more important lesson in delivering line and length on the subcontinent. And the red ball does a lot more off the pitch and through the air.- Australians will tell you that that they don’t like being anything other than number one and plan to keep it that way. It is why there is far more emphasis on this last frontier — or is it now ‘‘new horizons’’? — to conquer than there has been on other tours as the lads from Oz are on a mission to win a series and they are going about it in the best way the know how, absorbing the local culture. Brett Lee doing a little promotion work in Mumbai, playing the guitar, illustrated this. It’s all to do with psyche: to beat India is to know and understand what they are like. It’s a simple enough recipe.
