Coach’s despair at slow batting
AUSTRALIAN women’s cricket coach Matthew Mott has unloaded his frustration with how England played the Ashes Test from day one, in which a slow run rate made it almost impossible for the match to end with a result.
Speaking after the match that ended in a draw, Mott was frustrated Australia was forced to soak up nearly two days’ batting in the first innings in order to take a big lead over England. It left the Australians with just over a day to try to bowl England out on a lifeless wicket.
Mott felt England went for the safe option to keep the series alive.
“I think both teams have got to be honest about whether they were trying to win the Test match,” Mott said.
“To bat with pretty minimal intent on day one when you get the best of the conditions, I think if you’re going to sit back and say you’re trying to win the Test is not in my realms of thinking.
“We certainly would have been disappointed with that scoring rate on day one. That slowed the whole Test match up and made it difficult to get 20 wickets for both teams.”
England won the toss in the Test and batted first, but scored at a rate of less than two an over until about the 30th over and never got above 2.5 for the innings.
Australia then batted for much of the second and third days to make a score of 448, thanks largely to Ellyse Perry’s 213 not out.
But without taking a wicket when England went back in late on the third day, it was too big a task to take 10 wickets on the final day on a flat track.
“I thought it was a monumental effort for us to bowl them out for 280 given they won the toss and batted first on that wicket,” Mott said.
“We were really pleased with that, but I suppose that backed us into a bit of a corner with the game taking a slow path that we had to bat big in that first innings and get right ahead and roll the dice that we could get 10 wickets and not have to bat again.
“It certainly wasn’t the way we wanted to play the Test, but I’m pretty sure if there was maybe a bit more grass on day one and two, got the first innings through a bit quicker, we might have seen that result.”