Arun said, “It will be a tough match as we are playing at home and our players will be in a much better position than they were in Australia.”

The Indian team had a special strategy against Smith in Australia which proved to be effective. This time the team has prepared a plan to control the route.

In July last year, Arun received a call from Ravi Shastri. Amid the corona virus, the West Indies team reached England to play the series. Shastri realized that the Indian team might have to tour Australia.

Arun said, Shastri told me- ‘It was a long discussion but it was so revealing. ‘In Australia, the ball has to be kept outside the off stump. I want you to plan and field plan for the entire bowling attack.

Arun said, ‘Our plan was to control the runs as much as possible. And it starts by targeting Steve Smith. He is ultimately his most important batsman – the best batsman in the world.

Smith scored 313 runs in the series. Of this, 131 runs were scored in a single innings. He scored 182 runs in the remaining seven innings.

Arun said that Steve Smith faced a lot of problems against Trent Boult in 2019. This was on his mind. He said, ‘I shared Smith’s batting graph and data. All scoring charts, where he scores the most runs. We investigated very closely. When he plays on the side, where does the ball go in the air the most? A strategy was formed on this basis.

He further added, ‘It is clear in the data that 70 per cent of Smith’s runs are made on the off side. If we stop it then they have to play more on the on side. In such a situation, it will be difficult to control the ball while playing the shot.

Even after the plan in the Test series, if Smith scored a century in the series, then for that he faced more than 200 balls and the bowler could control them.