With apologies to Robert Burns for butchering his elegant prose, it appears that the worst laid plans of mice and Australian men are going awry just three days into the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series. The plans themselves appeared to be poorly constructed when they eschewed practice matches in favour of in-house training, But when they suddenly went for their horses-for-courses policy and dropped Travis Head, it seemed less like a plan and more like a stab in the dark.

Portrayed as victims

The Australian media can take some of the blame. Their one-eyed pre-match reporting created a siege mentality.  Liberal use of words like “blatantly doctored pitch” only served to heighten the sense of victimhood and placed too much emphasis on the toss.  The damage had already been done before Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel made fools of them with that crucial eighth wicket partnership.  Australia had fallen into the trap of their own making, buying into the “left-hander” conspiracy theory and taking their eye off the big picture.