It’s time for the purists to quench their thirst for Test cricket. The Ashes 2019 series is a couple of weeks away. With both the teams getting ready to fight it out, Australian captain Tim Paine is wary of the fact that the Australian batsmen are vulnerable to the swinging ball.
It has happened since a long time that the Australians collapse in at least one session of the series and give away the momentum to the English side. The fact that their last Ashes victory in England came 18 years is proof of that.
Tim Paine said, “It's something you discuss all the time whether you're in England or Australia or in India against the spin, you want to avoid losing wickets in clusters.”
The Australia A team has played a couple of unofficial Tests in England to prepare for the series ahead. In the second game, England Lions’ Sam Curran triggered one such collapse as he took 5 wickets off Australia’s last six that fell for just 17 runs.
Paine credited Curran by saying, “Full credit to Sam Curran he put the ball in the right area and challenged us. But we thought we missed a trick with some things we could be doing and things that guys have been working on to get better at that. But sometimes you have a little setback and that was one of those. But I thought the way we played him in the second innings showed that we're getting better.”
Some Australian players who were not a part of the World Cup squad have been playing red ball cricket and that will benefit the players against a strong England side.
“Certainly guys like James Pattinson and Josh Hazlewood in particular and some of our batters in this group have had an extended prep in red ball cricket, which we think will do them the world of good. So we're looking forward to next week and having another good hit out and then getting cracking in the first Test,” Paine said.
Paine and the other players are certainly looking forward to the Ashes series to continue their dominance over England and retain the ashes urn. They are excited that strong tussle will make cricket really exciting.
“We think it's going to be really intense, that's what we're after, we wanted to come over here and have a game. Sometimes, this was a good practice game, but I think sometimes touring teams, you can have tour games that just sort of peter out into pretty ordinary games of cricket at times, so we were lucky we had a great hit out here. We'll certainly have a good one amongst ourselves next week.”
(Source: ESPNCricinfo)
