Chasing a slice of history

Clean sweep of NZ would put Aussies in rare company

DAVID Warner admits Australia’s top four need to stand tall as the team pursue their third undefeated home summer of the modern era.

Beaten in their past five one-day internationals, Australia returns to more familiar soil for the three-match ODI series against New Zealand.

Wins in all three matches – the first of them tomorrow in Sydney – would secure them an unbeaten summer at home, after easily discarding New Zealand and Pakistan in Test matches, as well as Sri Lanka in Twenty20s.

“We always want to continue to win on home soil regardless of how well we have been going this summer,” Warner said. “The priority literally is to win every game you play at home.

“There’s no excuses. You have a lot of stuff that is in your favour with the biggest thing being the crowd.”

To achieve the feat, however, Australia will have to dramatically lift after their poor showing in South Africa.

Australia lost their first three wickets for less than 100 runs in all three games and, after rebuilding their innings, found it hard to get late, quick runs on the slower wickets.

A similar problem was also exposed in their two losses in

India, after Warner and Aaron Finch shot out of the blocks in a 10-wicket win in the series’ opener.

But the home wickets should suit Australia’s style of hard hitting late.

“It’s hard to put my finger on (what went wrong),” Warner said.

“We had a great win in that first game against India. The only thing I could probably put it down to is the top four not scoring the bulk of the runs.

“At least one of us needs to be there at the end. Marnus (Labuschagne) showed that the other day with that big hundred in Potchefstroom.”

In 2000-01 and 2009-10, Australia went unbeaten at home during the summer