In the aftermath of India's Test series defeat in England, head coach Ravi Shastri revealed that the team had already requested for a couple of warm-up games ahead of the arduous tour of Australia later this year. There's little argument that the change in stance is a direct result of India's back-to-back series defeats overseas (South Africa earlier this year).
On both those tours, India hit the straps fully only by their third Test, when they recorded their only wins. While India had called off the only two-day practice game entirely in South Africa, they trimmed their originally planned four-day game against Essex into a three-day affair. There have been mixed reports as well, some claiming that the management wasn't happy with the conditions on offer, while others clarifying that the management thought it'd be wise to go through high-intensity simulated sessions instead of playing in conditions that wouldn't help prepare better.
How important are these practice games really? And how importantly are they treated in reality? These are not questions that are asked only of India but a lot of other teams have been caught napping on these grounds too. Largely, because the volume of cricket isn't the same anymore. Gone are those days when an overseas tour bordered on being a three-month affair, starting with as many as two three-day games and another similar game spaced out between the third and the fourth Test. That not only helped teams arrive and get a hang of the alien conditions better, but also allowed its benched players to gain some important match-time when the second round of practice games returned in the middle of the series.
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