A few days before the Border Gavaskar Trophy kicks off in Perth, Australia’s Marnus Labuschagne said that India’s recent whitewash to New Zealand might have caused a little bit of damage to the visitors but the batter refused to rule them out.

India are coming into the series after a shattering defeat to New Zealand on home soil which ended their 12-year unbeaten run in their own backyard.

“It’s really hard to judge. They played in completely different conditions — spinning conditions — but having India come here off the back of a loss at home is something that’s never happened before (in my career). I think that is a good thing in terms of… they are probably a little bit lower on confidence, not coming off a Test victory, losing to New Zealand 3-0. I think that’s going to do a little bit of damage to their confidence, ” Labuschagne said to the media.

“They’re a quality line-up and they’re one of the best teams in the world. So you can never underestimate a team like that,” he added.

Labuschagne also recalled that India had their backs against the wall in the 2020/21 series with skipper Virat Kohli going back to India after the 1st Test. But the young Indian team, missing a lot of familiar faces, turned things around and pulled off a historic 2-1 win.

“That’s what happened in 2021 — the likes of (T) Natarajan played, (Mohammad) Siraj got his first crack in Australia, Washington Sundar played. They had all these guys that were probably a little bit new — Shubman (Gill) played those couple of games (in the 2020-21 series) – so there were new faces around” Labuschagne recalled.

(With Agency Inputs)