Australia head coach Andrew McDonald believes India’s strong lower-order batting, comprising Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel among others, will be the “differentiator” in the remaining Tests of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

Jadeja and Patel played pivotal roles with the bat in the first innings, slamming 70 and 84 respectively, as India crushed Australia in the first Test in Nagpur. The second Test begins in New Delhi from Friday.

“Their (India’s) lower-order batting is also going to be a differentiator in this series... in (Ravindra) Jadeja, (Axar) Patel and (Ravichandran) Ashwin… they’ve got a really strong lower-order and we’re going to be challenged by that,” McDonald told SEN Radio on Monday.

“They’re no doubt going to have more runs available to their lower-order than ours, so we’ve got to try to work out how to break even in that sense.”

The coach also said the loss in the opening Test will not force the team to revisit its strategy for the next three matches. “I think if you start to shift and change dramatically and too quickly you start to get lost. Clearly, we’re disappointed with our first-up performance, we are realistic though, it’s a four-Test series so there’s a long way to go,” McDonald said.

“The planning and preparation that went into it, we still feel that can work.”

Written with inputs from PTI

Eoin Morgan announces retirement

Eoin Morgan. Getty Images

England’s 2019 World Cup-winning captain Eoin Morgan announced his retirement from all forms of cricket on Monday. Morgan, 36, had quit the international scene last June. He captained England in 126 ODIs and 72 T20Is, winning 118 games across the two formats. With the bat, Morgan, who also played for Ireland early in his career, accumulated 10,159 runs in total in white-ball cricket.