A bigger challenge awaits Team India in Australia: Ganguly

After the forgettable tour of England in the just-concluded series, Team India will face a bigger challenge when they travel to Australia in December, according to former captain Sourav Ganguly.

He said the upcoming home series against England, that starts on October 14, will not pose a threat to the reigning world champions.

"England in India would not be a challenge. It will be a bit more than what it used to be in the past, when India played England in full strength," he told reporters at a promotional event in Mumbai on Saturday.

India had a disastrous July-September tour of England, where they lost the Test series 0-4 to meekly surrender their numero uno Test status to the Andrew Strauss-led team.

The reigning one-day international champions did no better in the shorter version of the game as they failed to win a single match in the rain-marred five-match ODI series.

"I think the biggest challenge that will identify (Mahendra Singh) Dhoni as a leader in world cricket is the tour of Australia. If India does well then Dhoni will be terrific. We have to wait and see (for that to happen)," Ganguly said.

He brushed aside the discussion on having a split captaincy for different formats of the game.

"It's early days to talk about split captaincy after one series loss. I don't think we should even think about it at this stage. We will have to wait and see how the team performs in Australia."

England has Andrew Strauss leading the Test side, Alistair Cook for ODIs and Stuart Broad as the Twenty20 skipper.