Aussies going backward

FOR the best part of a year, insiders were predicting the Bangladesh Test tour would be used by the warring parties as a pawn in cricket’s pay dispute.

Now Australian cricket as a collective has blood on its hands — paying the most humbling price for letting an indifferent attitude towards touring Bangladesh fester.

It is Cricket Australia’s responsibility to give its Test side optimum preparation time and, equally, there is an onus on players to have themselves in the right mental space.

The shock first Test result in Dhaka would indicate months of self-sabotaging left Australia underprepared for a tour that, until it came down to the crunch, was being treated as expendable.

Yes, contracts were signed soon before the team boarded the plane. There was a training camp in Darwin and Australia could do nothing to prevent monsoonal rain washing out its two-day tour match.

But that unyielding focus and attention to detail that Australia took into its lion-hearted Test tour of India earlier in the year has not been replicated.

Cricket in general was in a state of disarray and an Australia A tour — featuring Test stars Usman Khawaja and Glenn Maxwell — was abandoned.

Spare a thought for coach Darren Lehmann, who had to sit on his hands as his bosses went to war with his players.

As a result, Australian cricket has hit a dead end.

What are all the advancements made in India worth if on Australia’s very next trip to the subcontinent, against the ninthranked team in Test cricket, performances regress?

Another opportunity to win a series in Asia has been squandered in the Bangladesh dust.