5 unanswered questions for Australia before the Pune test

#2 Can the spinners be successful?

Nathan Lyon and Steve’O’Keefe are expected to start in Pune

In 2012, when England became one of the two teams to beat India in the last dozen years, their spinners Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann took a combined 37 wickets.

Considering the fact that spin is going to be the ultimate weapon to plague the Indian batsmen in their own conditions, the Australian selectors have announced five spinners, including Glenn Maxwell for the four-match series. This is not the first time the Aussies have come up with the spin-heavy bowling attack in India.

In fact, in Australia’s previous tours to India in 2008 and 2013, the squads were heavily weighted towards spin and the spinners picked up wickets at the expense of leaking too many runs. One fine example was Jason Krejza, who made a stunning Test debut in Nagpur in 2008 by taking 12 wickets but leaked 358 runs. The most worrying fact is that Nathan Lyon, who is the experienced spinner in the current Australian squad, averaged close to 40 in the three Tests he played in 2013.

Since Shane Warne’s retirement in 2007 more than a dozen spinners turned out for Australia in the sub-continent but none of them has been really successful so far. It will be interesting to see whether Nathan Lyon and Steve O’Keefe, who are expected to start in Pune, rewrite the bad history and capture the imagination of Australian fans.