Still wouldn’t have changed what we did leading in: Coach Andrew McDonald defends Australia’s Test preparation

New Delhi [India], February 20 (ANI): While acknowledging that his team’s batting meltdown in Delhi against India was “pretty poor,” Australia coach Andrew McDonald insisted that he would not alter any of the pre-tour preparations despite the fact that Australia did not play a tour game prior to the first Test. India is leading the four-match Test series 2-0, having registered victories in the Nagpur and Delhi Tests. India’s spinners dominated the proceedings, rolling Australia out for 113.

The hosts chased down the target with six wickets in hand in the second Test match. McDonald bemoaned the fact that Australia’s batters had faltered in the match due to imagined pressure despite being in a strong position. “We’ve got to be better than that, that’s the bottom line. We’ve got to own it and we are not here to shy away from the fact that wasn’t good enough. I still wouldn’t have changed what we did leading in, there’s no doubt about that,” ESPNcricinfo quoted McDonald as saying.

“We felt like we had India in a really vulnerable position, it was the first time in the series we saw the fielders back and [R] Ashwin having to control the tempo. Usually it’s pretty much a ring field and hard to rotate the strike and we felt like Marnus [Labuschagne] and Smudge [Steven Smith] had the game in their control at 2 for 85 looking to extend that lead. The rest was pretty plain to see, pretty poor,” he added.

“It’s once again pressure and, in this case, more perceived pressure than anything. In the first game we were coming from a long way behind. It felt like at times we wanted to rush to a total. We were in a hurry to build that lead and as we know here it is attritional cricket, you can do that over time. Our methods are going to be critiqued and rightfully so. There were some people who went clearly away from the game plan that made them successful over a period of time and that’s for us to own as a collective,” said the Australia head coach.

As many as six Australian batters fell while sweeping or reverse-sweeping in the innings. McDonald was more worried about anyone who deviated from their plans; for example, Smith and Pat Cummins were both sent back to the pavilion for playing crazy sweeps. “You talk about sweeping, Uz was sweeping first innings and gets applauded for it, so there is a balance. Uz was outstanding sweeping and reverse-sweeping.

Even Marn day two put [Ravindra] Jadeja under clear pressure with the sweep shot. We don’t want to go away from that as part of that method is finding that balance and you do need an element of good fortune on surfaces like that,” McDonald said.
“There are a lot of balls that spin past the outside edge and I thought the way that Travis Head applied himself and his dismissal, he easily could have played and missed or found the edge and it goes down and then you get an opportunity to build your innings.

There is an element of chance off the surface. I’m not saying the conditions were diabolical by any stretch of the imagination. If you apply the method over a period of time, as we saw with Uz and Pete Handscomb, they did it totally differently,” he added. Prior to the first Test in India, Australia did not play a tour game. Instead, they decided to have a week-long camp in Bengaluru with nets and centre-wickets so that the batsmen could adjust to the spinning conditions in India as well as red-ball cricket after playing T20 cricket in the BBL for three weeks before to their trip.

“I still wouldn’t have changed what we did leading in, there’s no doubt about that. I think they had really good preparation in Bangalore. So there’s not any excuses. I think at the end of day two, if you said our preparation was good, you’d probably have a different slant on it. But within an hour then people start to critique what happened in the past. I think at that point in time that the preparation was really good and the way we’re going about our work was good. I don’t think that had a great bearing on what happened in that hour,” said the Australia head coach.
“We were prepared for that and day three as well as we could have been, and we failed under the examination of India,” he added.

India and Australia will play the third Test of the Border-Gavaskar series from March 1 at the Holkar Cricket Stadium in Indore. Australia will miss the services of Josh Hazlewood for the remainder of the Border-Gavaskar Test series, with the right-arm quick having not yet recovered from Achilles tendonitis. Captain Pat Cummins has flown back home for family reasons but is expected to be back in time to lead the side in the third Test.