Former Australia ODI legend and considered as one of the greatest finishers of all time, Michael Bevan has expressed his desire to get involved with the current side who are struggling with recent batting collapses in the limited-overs format of the game.
Taking to his twitter handle, Bevan has put his hands up for the batting coach’s role with Australia’s current ODI team. Bevan wrote,
“@CricketAus would love to be considered for the role of ODI batting coach -where do I apply?”
Meanwhile, the Aussies are currently trailing 0-2 in the five-match series and need something special to make a comeback from here. It was also Australia’s ten consecutive away ODI loss, and captain Steven Smith was visibly frustrated with the consistent batting collapses from his team.
“It’s happening a bit too often for my liking, to be honest with you, in all forms of cricket,” Smith said. “We’ve had a lot of collapses, and we need to stop. It’s easy just to sit here and say ‘it needs to stop’, but when you get out in the middle you have to change what you’re doing because it’s not working.
“Watching the ball closer (could be a solution), or maybe the guys are trying to watch it too closely and forgetting about just playing the game.
“It’s a hard one to put my finger on. But whatever it is, it needs to change, and we need to make better decisions when we’re under pressure and start playing the game properly. Because we’re having too many collapses and it’s not good enough.”
Bevan has been the club coach for Easts in Sydney Premier Cricket in the recent past and his offer made on Twitter was immediately noticed by World Cup-winning captain Michael Clarke who stated that it was “Exactly what this team needs”.
Bevan had represented Australia in 232 ODI’s and boasted a sensational average of 53.58 and was considered as the greatest finisher of all time. The southpaw played his last international match in 2004.