'Ravichandran Ashwin Developing Special Delivery For Steve Smith': Sunil Gavaskar's Brilliant Response to Australian 'Mind Games'

India’s tour of Australia this year is still a couple of months away but the ‘mind games’ have already started. The likes of Ravi Shastri, Ricky Ponting, Geoff Lawson among others have picked their respective winners of what is anticipated to be a closely contested five-match Test series. India have returned victorious from the Australian shores with a similar scoreline of 2-1 from their previous two tours and will be eyeing a hat-trick of wins this time around.

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Australia – the current world Test champions – though will be itching to lay their hands on the Border Gavaskar Trophy that has eluded them for nearly a decade now. While the predictions will continue to fly thick and fast, batting legend Sunil Gavaskar thinks that the response to the Australian mind games hasn’t been proportionate from their Indian counterparts and apart from Ravi Shastri, there’s nobody who has put up a strong response yet.

“The five Test matches that India play (at home) before they go to Australia will be good for the mental tuning that is required for a tough tour like that,” Gavaskar wrote on his column for the mid-day. “Already the mind games have begun with Australian players both current and former airing their views about what the result would be.”

“While they (Australia) are not making Glenn McGrath-like statements of a clean sweep they are still suggesting that Australia will prevail. Sadly, apart from Ravi Shastri no other former or current player has seen to counter the mind games which the Aussies are so good at,” he added.

Gavaskar has an excellent suggestion to make up for the lack of counterpunches from the Indian cricket fraternity: Ravichandran Ashwin should start talking about a “special delivery” that he’s developing to keep Australia’s best Test batter of the current era Steve Smith.

“Maybe Ravichandran Ashwin should start telling us about a special delivery that he is developing for Steve Smith, that is of course if he continues to open the batting and can survive Jasprit Bumrah,” Gavaskar wrote.

For the record, Ashwin has dismissed Smith eight times in Test cricket – the joint second-most after Stuart Broad who saw the back of the former Aussie skipper 11 times during his career.