Former Australia skipper Allan Border condemned the Australia team for their batting in the second test of the Border Gavaskar Trophy. The world number one Test side faced a crushing defeat in both tests and found no answers for India’s bowling.
Allan Border was miffed with Australia’s performance on the field. The 67-year-old stated that the tourists were highly reckless in their approach.
Allan Border advised the Australian team to shut out the outside noise and just sit down and focus on the methods to play quality spinning bowling in the next couple of matches. He also added that they should try to play more in straight bats rather than cross-bat at least in the initial stage of the innings.
“They have got to turn off their radios and stop reading newspapers for the next couple of days, that’s for sure because they’re going to call peeps but yeah they’ve got to sit down and talk about the methodology of playing quality spin bowling. They have had meetings about this and how to go about it. You have got to have a method and don’t think cross-bat is the right method, not initially in your innings,” he said.
India has successfully retained the BGT trophy four consecutive times with two series wins down under. Team India will take on the Aussies in the third test match of the series on Wednesday ( 1st March) at Indore.
Sweep Shot Not A Good Option When Ball Gets Low – Allan Border
Allan Border also cited the example of Usman Khawaja’s innings in the 1st innings but also warned sweep shots will be dangerous once the pitch becomes slow and also emphasized that Australian batters need to implement the right strategy playing the spinners.
“Usman Khawaja played well in the first innings on the back of a lot of good reverse sweeps but as the pitch got lower that became more dangerous shots so they had to reassess and that’s what Test match batting is all about,” Border Added
Most of the Australian batters were predetermined to play sweep shots irrespective of the delivery. The majority of Australian batters Usman Khawaja, Matt Renshaw, Steve Smith, and Pat Cummins got out while trying to sweep the ball. He also said that it will be difficult for batters to play such quality spin bowling and it will come with experience over the years.