Shane Warner believes India will start as favourites in the test series | Photo Credit: AP

India have never managed to win a test series in Australia but one of the legends of the game, Shane Warner has labelled India as firm favourites for the Border-Gavaskar Test series against Australia that starts from 6th December. Warne’s comments came after Australia continued their bad form, sinking to a 21-run loss in a 10-over-a-side match against South Africa. India have never won a Test series down under, with their best result being a 1-1 draw in 2003-04 under Sourav Ganguly but Warne believes they have the strength to come out on top this time.

“For the first that I can remember India come to Australia in the Test matches as favourites. I think Australia’s batting is in disarray in all forms of the game. They need to do something about it pretty quickly,” said Warne. “India, they smell blood and they don’t fear Australia.”

India arrive in Australia as the number 1 ranked team in Test cricket but have lost consecutive series away from the subcontinent. India lost 2-1 to South Africa at the start of this year and 4-1 to England recently. Both series losses came despite Kohli topping the run-scoring each time.

Australia also haven’t fared much better. They lost an ODI series to England in June, then lost the test series and T20 series to Pakistan. Australia recently also lost the ODI series and the lone T20 to South Africa on Saturday. Warne has been extremely critical about the chaos in Cricket Australia recently and did not hold back from commenting on how poor Australian batting currently looks.

“It’s been poor, hasn’t it. Leading to the shot selection, there’s been no awareness of the game situation, that’s why it’s even more disappointing,” Warne said. “There has to be a reason why they continue to play the wrong shot and the (poor) match awareness. There has to be a reason for that."

“Why suddenly in Australian cricket are the batsmen making these wrong decisions consistently in games in tough situations? They just make the wrong choice with shot selection, just not summing up the game.”

Australia have struggled badly since their captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner were banned for a year due to the ball tampering scandal. Head Coach Darren Lehmann also resigned which led to Justin Langer been appointed as the new coach.