In the Visakhapatnam ODI, the Indian team fell against the bowling of Australia’s left-arm fast bowler Mitchell Starc and in that ODI, India suffered the heaviest defeat in the ODI history. This was not the first time when the Indian team collapsed against the left-arm fast bowler in cricket. Earlier, the Indian batting line-up collapsed against Mohammad Amir in the final of the 2017 Champions Trophy, against Trent Boult in the semi-final of the ODI World Cup in England and Shaheen Afridi in the first match against Pakistan in the T20 World Cup played in the UAE. The biggest reason behind the surrender of Indian batsmen against the left-arm fast bowler is that the Indian team does not have any quality left-arm bowlers who can give enough practice to the Indian team.
The batsmen of the Indian team have also been struggling a lot against the left-arm fast bowlers for the last 10 years. The biggest reason is lack of practice against left-arm fast bowlers. Team India currently does not have a left-arm fast bowler like Starc, Boult, Shaheen or Amir. Left-arm fast bowlers who have played international cricket for the Indian team include Khalil Ahmed, Jaydev Undkat, Barinder Saran, Chetan Sakaria, Thangarasu Natarajan and Arshdeep Singh. However, none of them have the quality that Trent Boult, Mitchell Starc, Mohammad Amir or Shaheen Afridi have. Also, none of those bowlers can regularly bowl or swing at 145 or more.
Apart from this some bowlers like Mukesh Chaudhary, Yash Dayal, Akash Singh and Mohsin Khan are doing well in domestic cricket, Indian batsmen have been practicing against these select 10-12 bowlers for some time now. The result is that this practice is not enough to deal with international level fast bowlers. Undkat is the only left-arm fast bowling option for India in the ongoing series against Australia. Prior to 2013, 4 left-arm fast bowlers in the form of Zaheer Khan, Irfan Pathan, RP Singh and Ashish Nehra have played together in Team India and the Indian batsmen at that time performed well against left-arm bowlers including Wasim Akram.