Going down three-nil in a series isn’t pleasing, it is rather irksome for the side’s coach and so was New Zealand’s Mike Hesson on Friday night. After posing a poor batting performance in final One-Dayer at Melbourne, New Zealand’s head coach reserved some harsh words for his troops as the Kiwi’s were handed a series whitewash by Australia who thus retained the Chappell-Hadlee series.
Calling the batting as ‘sub-standard’, Mike admitted that passive and not aggressive fielding was the biggest disappointment of the tour for him.
“It was an improved bowling and fielding performance and a pretty sub standard batting performance.”
It all started at the Sydney Cricket Ground last Sunday when New Zealand had Australia toiling at 94 runs for four and later took the key to dominating the match with some loose death bowling, dropped catches and sloppy ground fielding. The visitors could never make a comeback from there, as Steven Smith and David Warner took the game away from them with some furious stroking.
In Melbourne, the Kiwis put on a better display in fielding but couldn’t support it well with the bat.
“The first couple of games I’d describe them as a passive performance, especially in the field and with the ball. There were some good signs [in Melbourne] with a more complete performance with the ball and in the field but we weren’t able to back that up with the bat.”
Mike also talked about the disappointment of not getting to see much of intensity and energy the New Zealanders are often tagged with, during the tour.
“The energy and intensity in the field is something we’ve really instilled into whoever has come into the group and those first couple of games that was the most disappointing, that we didn’t offer as much as we needed to in the field and didn’t back up our bowlers enough. That’s something we can control, and spoke about a lot before this game and saw some improvements.”
The 42-year-old also admit that the hosts were better performers on the field, following their dominating performance with both bat and ball.
“I’d like to think so, yes. We haven’t played well at all. We’ve played a side with a little bit of trepidation. It’s exposed us in some areas that we knew a little bit about but it’s show us we’ve got plenty of room to move.”
New Zealand will now face Bangladesh in the first One-Dayer at Christchurch on boxing day.