AUSSIE MEDIA ROAST SMITH’S TEAM
Scathing attacks after loss to Bangladesh
AN Australia team that stared down the hardened bureaucrats and faceless money men of the nation’s cricket board to strike a huge win in pay negotiations showed precious little unity when put under pressure by Bangladesh, the ninth-ranked test team.
Steve Smith’s men arrived in Dhaka keen to get back to the cricket after an acrimonious 10month standoff between the players’ union and Cricket Australia (CA) that reflected badly on both sides of the pay dispute.
Instead, the team’s hopes of quickly restoring some of the goodwill lost during the boardroom wrangling was swept away in the South Asian dust by an alltoo-familiar string of batting collapses as the hosts eked out a famous 20-run triumph.
Australian media paid due credit to Bangladesh for engineering their first test win over the tourists but were scathing of Smith’s team for failing to channel their superior resources into an expected victory.
“And then there are the prima donnas, otherwise known as the Australian test team,” Jon Anderson fumed in Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper.
Smith lamented that his team had failed to learn from mistakes made in India, where they won acclaim for their fight even as they were overhauled 2-1 in the tense test series in February and March.
But the tourists seemed more culpable of looking too far ahead rather than focusing on the present in their approach to the much-improved Bangladesh side.
Before the series, Smith justified Ashton Agar’s selection in favour of fellow spinner Steve O’Keefe, who engineered the one victory in India, as taking a long view to beat the top-ranked test side when Australia return there in four years.
Usman Khawaja earned a recall as Smith forecast “a big home summer” for the stylish left-hander against Ashes foes England.
Agar took five wickets but it was a mediocre return on a pitch offering prodigious spin and bounce, while Khawaja managed a total of just two runs in two innings from the combined eight deliveries he faced.
Australia now face the more immediate problem of being 1-0 down in a series and the danger of falling to sixth in the world test rankings if they lose the second match in Chittagong.
O’Keefe’s selection in place of injured paceman Josh Hazlewood is a sign Australia are, belatedly, taking their opponents seriously, as Bangladesh matchwinner Shakib Al Hasan said they would after Wednesday’s victory.
With their opponents’ pride wounded, Bangladesh can expect a fierce response from the tourists next week.