Smith puts blame on batsmen
Australia captain Steve Smith lambasted his batsmen on Sunday, blaming the lack of consistency at the top of the order for the current struggles of the reigning world champions.
Australia were handed a seven-wicket defeat in the final ODI by India, who wrapped up the five-match series 4-1 on Sunday.
“We showed some glimpses throughout the series that we could play but we’ve been losing wickets in clumps very consistently and that’s not good enough,” Smith told reporters after the series.
“The top four need to stand up and really take control. We did that in a couple of games, the last game in Bangalore to be particular. But we are not doing it consistently enough,” Smith told the post-match press conference. Australia won in the penultimate game in Bangalore, but struggled to compete against India in the other games.
“It’s (batting collapse) been addressed several times. We are just not taking our words out in the middle and delivering with actions, unfortunately. We have glimpses of it, play well in periods and we then just get ourselves in trouble, probably from poor decision making.”
Australia has seen a number of new faces in the past couple of years and a new playing XI in almost every other game. They had lost a Test in Bangladesh before drawing the series 1-1 ahead of their India tour.
Asked if the constant shuffling made it difficult for the players to understand their roles, Smith said: “They know their roles and the template of the way we want to play. We are just not doing it consistently enough. We talk about making big scores and setting it up for the guys to have an onslaught in the last 10-15 overs. When we do it well, we get the results we are after. We are just not doing it consistently enough to get the results we need and it’s something we need to work on.”
However, Smith admitted it was a brilliant show from India to restrict runs in the middle overs and stop Australia from building on their brilliant start.
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