Australian head coach Andrew McDonald said that many had thought that all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja’s absence would hurt Team India in the recently concluded T20I series against his team, but in his absence, Akshar Patel stepped up and did a fantastic job.
Akshar was brilliant with the ball in the T20I series, as he finished the three-match T20I series with 8 wickets in his 10 overs against Australia and was named the Player of the Series.
Cameron Green was the leading scorer in the T20I series with 118 runs in three matches at a strike rate of 214 against India.
Andrew McDonald said at the post-match press conference: “Akshar, in particular, had an outstanding series. With Jaddu out everyone thought that it might become a bit of a weakness for India, but they've found another one again, which tends to happen.”
On being asked if Australia’s bowling is a concern heading to the T20 World Cup 2022, McDonald said: “Across the series the run rate was high; it was entertaining cricket from the get-go. Bat dominated the ball, so there was really no place to hide for bowling units, in particular death.”
The head coach further explained, “We worked our way through some plans. We saw some good results with some of the plans that we implemented that might be able to transition to the T20 World Cup. The connection between here (India) and Australia might be slightly different, with a little bit more bounce, and different tactics. Mitchell Starc comes back into the picture being one of our best death bowlers. So, we feel like we'll get reinforcements there.”
McDonald admitted that Australian bowlers failed to put pressure on the skilled Indian batters throughout the T20I series.
He added, “The conversations always going to be can you get better at your death bowling? The answer to that is yes. We encourage our guys to make good decisions and execute them. Sometimes the batter out-executes you and we've seen that with Hardik (Pandya) across the series. Suryakumar Yadav was outstanding today and he's gonna be dangerous in the World Cup but he showed what he can do.”
However, Australia was without a few of their T20 World Cup-bound players on the India tour, and the head coach feels they have enough depth to make a strong comeback.
McDonald said, “It's fortuitous that some of the guys got the opportunity here. We got a couple of injuries which are concerning leading into a World Cup. You don't like to see some of your mainstay players out of the team leading in but we feel as though we've got some good options in depth.”
Praising Cameron Green, the Australian coach noted: “I've asked him to show great intent on top of the order and everything that we're seeing so far shows that he's doing that.”
He signed off by saying, “It's probably opportunistic the way that he's come into the opening position with obviously David Warner not being here and a couple of other players from our World Cup 15. And that's all you can do, given an opportunity... Before we came over here we thought he had the skill sets to be able to succeed there, and he's taken on some of the best bowlers in world cricket.”
(With PTI Inputs)
