India to Tour Australia in December, Confirms Ganguly; Expects Team to Win “Tough” Series

BCCI President Sourav Ganguly said the national team will visit Australia in December yet required an abbreviated isolate period for the players.

Australia has checked the spread of the coronavirus except in Melbourne, its second-greatest city, which has seen an ongoing flood in cases.

By Friday, Australia, a country of 25 million, had recorded recently more than 9,000 COVID-19 cases, 106 of them deadly.

“Ya, ya, we have confirmed that tour. In December we will be coming. We just hope the number of quarantine days gets reduced a bit”, Ganguly told TV channel India Today.

“Because we don’t want the players to go all that far and sit in hotel rooms for two weeks. It is very, very depressing and disappointing.”

“And, as I said Australia and New Zealand have been in good position except for Melbourne. So from that point of view, we will be going there and hopefully, the quarantine days will be less and we can get back to cricket.”

The West Indies squad went through 14 days in isolate after arriving in England on June 9 for the three-Test series, where the first Test match between England and West Indies started on July 8, denoting the arrival of worldwide cricket.

Virat Kohli’s India is scheduled to visit Australia for four Test matches in December-January. India won a four-Test series in Australia 2-1 out of 2018-19.

“It is going to be a tough series. It is not going to be what it was two years back. It is going to be a strong Australia but our team is as good,” said Ganguly.

“We have the batting, we have the bowling. We just need to bat better. You know the best team overseas bat well.

“When we were so successful in England, in Australia, in Pakistan we were getting 400-500-600 in Test matches. I said that to Virat as well.”

During that Test tour, Australia was without their top batsmen David Warner and Steve Smith, who both missed the series because of their ball-altering bans.

Ganguly backed his side to win under Kohli’s leadership.

“Because you are Virat Kohli your standards are high. When you walk out to play, when you walk out with your team, I, watching on TV, don’t expect you to just play well against Australia. I expect you to win,” said the former India captain.

“So you have to live up to the standards. For his captaincy tenure, this will be a milestone series – more than the World Cup.”