India Vs Australia 2020: Five Indian batsmen with most Test hundreds in Australia

Overseas Test hundreds are always very special, but when you score a hundred in an India Vs Australia Test series in Australia, it’s even more special because Australia is one of the toughest places to bat for an Indian batsman.

It’s not that the ball moves around significantly in Australia as it does he in England, but it’s the bounce that those pitches have. The Indian batsmen are generally used to playing at low and slow pitches back home, so when they go to Australia and the ball is bouncing and fizzing through, it’s not easy to adapt to those conditions.

Here are the 5 batsmen who have scored most hundreds for Indian in India Vs Australia Test matches on the Australian soil –

1 Virat Kohli (6 hundreds)

Virat Kohli has been on only three tours of Australia yet and has played only 12 Test matches on the Australian soil, but he is already topping the list in terms of the most number of Test hundreds scored by an Indian batsman in Australia.

Kohli has scored 6 hundreds in his 12 Test matches in Australia and 4 out of those 6 hundreds came in a single Test series in 2014-15 which is a record as well.

2 Sachin Tendulkar (6 hundreds)

Tendulkar has also scored as many Test hundreds as Kohli on the Australian soil, but Tendulkar played more games than Kohli to do that. Tendulkar played 20 Test matches in Australia and scored 6 hundreds, while Kohli has done it in 12 Test matches only.

Tendulkar, however, scored more fifties than Kohli as he got 7 fifties to his name in the Test matches in Australia as compared to Kohli’s 3.

3 Sunil Gavaskar (5 hundreds)

Sunil Gavaskar is one of the only 5 Indian batsmen who averaged more than 50 in Australia in Test match cricket. The former Indian opener played only 11 Test matches on the Australian soil, but he scored 5 hundreds and piled on 920 runs at an average of 51.11.

4 VVS Laxman (4 hundreds)

VVS Laxman was another Indian batsman who was very fluent in Australian conditions. He used to play the ball on the rise and was good on the back foot as well. Since the Australian grounds always have a fair bit of extra bounce as compared to the grounds in any other country, it helped Laxman play his back foot shots with efficiency.

Laxman scored 4 Test hundreds in Australia in 15 games and he scored 4 Test fifties as well to go with it. Barring the tour of 2011-12 where he struggled quite a bit, Laxman always made meaningful contributions for India on all the other tours down under.

5 Cheteshwar Pujara (3 hundreds)

When India beat Australia in a Test series in their own backyard for the first time ever in 2018-19, Cheteshwar Pujara had a key role to play in that. Not only was Pujara the highest run scorer for India in that series, he scored three hundreds as well.

Till date, Pujara holds the highest batting average among all the Indian batsmen who have scored at least 500 Test runs for India in Australia. Pujara has scored 722 runs in 7 Test matches he has played in Australia at an average of 55.53.

Pujara is again going to be the trumpcard for India in the upcoming India Vs Australia Test series. He is probably not as flamboyant as some of the other batsmen in the current Indian squad, but his solidity at no. 3 bails India out of tough situations more often than not.