Australia coach Andrew McDonald has said that Australia wasn’t good enough and that they have failed the spin examination in India after being humiliated by six wickets inside three days in the second Test at Delhi against India.
The Pat Cummins-led side now trails 0-2 in the four-match series and India have already retained the Border-Gavaskar Trophy as they had first won the Nagpur Test by an innings and 132 runs and now routed the visitors in Delhi as well.
Australia coach Andrew McDonald said that Australia are rightfully being criticized as they crumbled from 61/1 on day two to 113 all out on day three in the second innings of the Delhi Test. Ravindra Jadeja picked a career-best 7/42 and Ashwin got three wickets.
“Our methods are going to be critiqued, and rightfully so. At the end of day two, if you said our preparation was good (with Australia on 61/1), you’d probably have a different slant on it, but within an hour (on day 3) then people start to critique what happened in the past. And day three, as well as we could have been and we failed under the examination of India,” McDonald was quoted as saying by Australian Associated Press on Monday.
The Australian team has been slammed for not playing tour games ahead of the Test series, but the coach said that as far as he understood, the preparatory camp in Bengaluru on turning tracks had provided adequate preparation for the spin test.
“I still wouldn’t have changed what we did leading in, there’s no doubt about that. I think they (squad) had really good preparation in Bangalore, so there’s not any excuses,” added the coach.
He also said that some players diverted from their time-tested game plan, which resulted in the second humiliating defeat.
“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. 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,” he added.
The third Test in Indore will begin on March 1 and Australia will expect to have the services of Mitchell Starc and Cameron Green, who missed out on the first two Tests due to injuries.
(PTI inputs)
