Those injuries can’t be put down to fitness. However, the other injuries show that the level of match-fitness of the players is not good enough.
Compared to India, the Australians had lost only David Warner to soft tissue injury — groin — in the Test series and he has somehow regained fitness to play the last two Tests.
Importantly, Australia’s four front-line bowlers — Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon — have bowled 435.1 overs in the first three Tests and are fit enough to play the fourth Test.
Apart from these four, they have tried two more in Cameron Green and Marnus Labuschagne, who has bowled just nine overs through the series.
In contrast, India have tried as many as 10 bowlers. Among them, Ashwin, Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj are the only ones to have bowled over 100 overs each. Two of those, Ashwin and Bumrah, are unfit.
Umesh and Saini have, however, bowled only 39.4 and 36.5 overs respectively which is why their injuries are even more…
