India's chances of making it to the World Test Championship 2025 final depend on their performance in the crucial five-match Test Series in Australia. the two nations square off in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT), following a humiliating 0–3 thumping at home for India against New Zealand. The series' opening game is scheduled for Friday, November 22, at Perth's Optus Stadium. India was scheduled to play India A in a practice match prior to that. But because the game was called off, India will now have a new kind of practice.
India's secret practice session
The famous WACA stadium in Perth will host the Indian team's practice sessions, which will be completely strict and secret. All public viewing will be prohibited, and the entire site will be under lockdown. The usage of cell phones is one of the many severe limitations placed on stadium employees. In the practice session before the first Test, Team India would participate in match simulation, according to the report.
Practice match against India A cancelled
According to Rohit Sharma, the India team in order to better manage the players' effort, they decided to hold a match simulation instead of a full-fledged practice match, hence they cancelled the practice match.
"Look, you know, rather than practice match, we planned a very match simulation kind of a thing with India A. I think sometimes when you play that practice match, we're travelling with a squad of 19 players and it was only three days that were allotted to us. And I don't know how much workload we can get done in those three days in terms of getting everyone prepared," Rohit said.
"So we, as a management as well, we feel that rather than having that, the match simulation where the batters can spend more time in the middle, batting in the middle, and then the bowlers as well can bowl a lot of balls, so that is something that, we as a team feel more comfortable doing rather than playing a practice game because game time is not a problem. All of us have been playing a lot of cricket. So it's just about spending time in the middle," the Indian captain added.
