Australian pace attack will have the edge over India in WTC final: Chappell

Former Australian captain Ian Chappell feels that the Australian pace attack in English conditions will give them the upper hand in next month's World Test Championship (WTC) final against India, in the absence of injured pacer Jasprit Bumrah and wicket-keeper batter Rishabh Pant.

There have been quite a few injury concerns in the Indian camp leading to the WTC final with Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul are another two players who have been ruled out off the final scheduled from June 7-11 .

According to Chappell Hardik Pandya who played his last first class game in 2018 can also harm India.

"The injuries to Jasprit Bumrah and Rishabh Pant badly affect India, as they would be outright favourites with these two playing. The somewhat surprising unavailability of allrounder Hardik Pandya also harms India, as he could have provided them with the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle," Chappell wrote in a column for ESPNcricinfo.

While majority of the Indian players will go into the final after two months of IPL but Chappell feels that might not negatively impact them after all.

"To make matters even more difficult, many of the players involved have only competed in the IPL in the lead-up to the one-off Test. While this may not seem to be the ideal preparation, it's worth recalling the opinion of former England batter Ravi Bopara. In 2009, Bopara went from the fledgling IPL into a Test series against West Indies and reckoned he was ideally prepared because T20 got his feet moving and put him in a positive frame of mind," he said referring to Bopara's successive hundreds in the Caribbean.

Chappell also thinks that Australia's pace attack is ahead of India while the Rohit Sharma led side has the edge in the spin department.