"Mentally They Are Very Fragile": Harbhajan Singh Takes Swipe At Australia

With Australia trailing India 0-2 in the four-match Test series, former cricketer Harbhajan Singh has labelled the visitors as a 'mentally fragile' side. With the the third Test starting in Indore on Wednesday, India have a chance to go 3-0 up and clinch the series. The hosts have already retained the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, thanks to the Australian batters inability to tackle India's spin trio -- Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin and Axar Patel. Harbhajan feels that the Australian team, which is currently in India, has looked "clueless" at times.

"If you compare to other Australian teams which toured earlier - we don't want to go 30-40 years back but even if we go that far - I think this is probably the weakest team. Not in terms of skills, mentally they are very fragile. They are not able to handle pressure the way the Aussies used to. It'll be fair to say this is not the Aussie-Aussie kind of team that we used to see or play against," Harbhajan told The Indian Express in an interview.

Harbhajan, who announced his retirement from the sport last year, said that Australia have always been a tactically sound cricketing nation, but the current side has looked "clueless", since arriving in India.

"The Aussies used to have a lot of plans before touring any country. They understood the conditions better than the other teams. That's the reason they were a bit more successful than others, even in India. This team, particularly, are clueless. They don't have any plans. In the first game, they were clueless. They knew these conditions would be challenging for any batter - the ball will spin from the first ball. It's not something that's started to happen now; it's been happening for the last eight-10 years. In 2012-13, they lost on similar wickets. They were clueless even at that point in time but they fought better than this. But this team, I don't see anyone standing up and taking those challenges and trying to do something different than what others are doing," he added.

from NDTV Sports-Cricket https://ift.tt/8dO3eyz