Odds against overworked Aussies

London: Bookmakers — legal ones, that is — incline to the view that Australia will regain the Ashes. But they may make England slight favourites by the time the first Test starts on November 25 if Australia's tour of India in the next month goes awry.

One of the features of Australian cricket — its outstanding feature — used to be its pursuit of excellence, irrespective of all other considerations. But the primary consideration of its board now seems to be money: in other words, the objective is to play as much as possible, just like England.

Thus the gap between the two countries has narrowed, and not simply because Australia's great cricketers — the Warnes, McGraths, Haydens and Gilchrists — have retired. Australia's purse-strings are tied to India. Their players have to tour there annually to pay the bills.

Originally a seven-match one-day series in India was agreed for every autumn, but this year it has been turned into three one-dayers and two Test matches, the first of which starts in Mohali on Friday.

This is not, as Australia's captain Ricky Ponting has already pointed out, the ideal preparation for an Ashes series. Indian pitches are slow.

Even more to the point, the turnover of Australian players on their tour last year was rapid: their bowlers broke down under the strain of playing almost throughout the year to subsidise the whole sport at home.

Bitter experience

During less than a month of cricket in India this time last year, Australia had to send home five players with injuries, including Brett Lee and Peter Siddle who have hardly played since, while Mitchell Johnson and Ben Hilfenhaus stayed on the tour with leg injuries.

Any sort of repetition in the next month and Australia's cupboard will be denuded by the eve of the Brisbane Test, and England's chances will have soared. The Australians' only warm-up game of their tour, is in Chandigarh, a few miles from where Friday's Test will begin.

On a flat pitch, both of the Australian opening batsmen, Shane Watson and Simon Katich, made hundreds in their total of 319 for one wicket, against an Indian attack which included three Test bowlers.

Two of Australia's key Test players are not in India at all, but in South Africa, awaiting the final of the Champions League. Mike Hussey and Doug Bollinger are members of Chennai Super Kings: even in the days of globalisation, this is a rather crazy situation, as Australia coach Tim Nielsen has said.

The two Australians are playing for an Indian team in South Africa, then for Australia in India on Friday. Assuming, that is, neither Hussey nor Bollinger gets injured.

Bollinger has been inked in to take the new ball — from which Australia's other fast left-armer Mitchell Johnson shies — along with Hilfenhaus or Siddle, whose rehabilitation from a stress fracture is not yet complete.