India vs Australia Test Series 2008: Mitchell Johnson Asks for More Warm-up Matches

August 28, 2008 by Biplob Kishore Deb
Filed under: Sports

Ahead of the tour of India, Australian pacer Mitchell Johnson thinks Australia needs more practice match before the first test against India gets underway on October 9. Australia has just one scheduled warm up match at India before the start of the test series, but to Mitchell Johnson, it is not enough for the Australian players, considering Indian tour as a hard challenge to take up.

Meanwhile, reports have it that BCCI is not interested to arrange a second warm up match because India’s domestic cricket is going on, and arranging an extra match would require rescheduling the domestic cricket. However, Cricket Australia has not filed any official request for another warm-up match yet.

Cricinfo reported:

“It’s probably not ideal [to have only one game],” Johnson told AAP. “We probably want a few more games before that, but that’s the way it is.

“We’ve got one game before so we’ll have to go back to our states and work pretty hard and try to do the best we can there to prepare as well as we can for India. It’s always hard to prepare for India, which has such different conditions than here, so it is going to be tough. I think we will manage.”

Johnson performed excellently well in the ODI series during last year’s tour in India. Now, he wants to perform similarly in the test series as well. Terming five-day cricket in India as “extremely hard,” the pacer has taken it as a challenge and is desperately waiting to face the challenge.

With next month’s pre-scheduled Champions Trophy being postponed, Australia does not have enough international schedule before the India tour. Australia will face Bangladesh at home in a three-match ODI series, due to start from 30 August.

Tags: Cricket