Australia to practice in Dubai ahead of India tour

Jan 2. (CRICKETNMORE) - Australia team is looking to practice in Dubai as a preperation for their upcoming series against India starting in February 2017. Australia, who have not won a Test in India since 2004 are gearing up for the series. 

In the past, England enjoyed similar preparations in the Gulf state ahead of their landmark 2-1 series win in India in 2012, while the West Indies also spent time at the academy before winning the World Twenty20 championship in India last year.

The tour to face the world's number one side next month has been tagged the "closest thing to mission impossible" for 

The staging camp at Dubai's state-of-the-art International Cricket Council (ICC) Academy has been devised to help avoid a repeat of Australia's disastrous 2013 series in India where they lost all four Tests.

"India is not going to be the same everywhere," Cricket Australia's high performance general manager Pat Howard told Fairfax Media.

"What they can do in Dubai is do a lot of different preparation with different types of pitches."

"The ICC have done a really good job where they'll have different pitches of the cities... so it's not just spin pitches, there are different types," said Pat Howard,  Cricket Australia's high performance general manager .

"We cannot copy what we are going to get. It's all about the mindset that we're going to adapt. We can't get practice against (Ravichandran) Ashwin and (Ravindra) Jadeja either."

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Australia's team for Tuesday's final Sydney Test against Pakistan has been chosen with an eye on the four-Test India campaign and includes two spinners in Nathan Lyon and Steve O'Keefe. Third spinner Ashton Agar was also in the 13-man squad but did not make the staring eleven.

Australia will play four test matches on India tour. The first Test begins in Pune on February 23.

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Saurabh Sharma