Furious Clarke blasts ‘horrible’ shot selection
“Unacceptable” and “horrible” were just two of the adjectives used by Australian captain Michael Clarke to describe his team’s performance leading up to their defeat by an innings and 135 runs against India at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium here on Tuesday.
As Clarke strode in to address journalists after the match, his grim demeanor and barely-suppressed fury spoke volumes about what he exactly thought of his team. Still, he minced few words. “It probably would be more polite of me to not put into words what I exactly thought of our batting in this match. It’s obviously unacceptable and very disappointing,” Clarke said.
“I certainly don’t want to take any credit away from India. They showed us how to bat in these conditions. Our batting has been unacceptable in the first two Tests. I’m more concerned about about our first innings performances than our second, especially since we won both the tosses, and 237 (in the first innings here) is unacceptable.”
With a week’s break before the third Test at Mohali, Clarke knows Australia have to put in hours of hard work to ensure they aren’t left red faced again.
“We have lots of work to do, for a start. You don’t get better as players by sitting on the couch,” Clarke said. “These are certainly not the sort of standards we set in the Australian team. There’s plenty of people that watch us on TV, some even fly around the world to support us and we know we failed them.”
Clarke lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of the batting unit. “India have showed us how to bat in this Test. In the first session, they scored only about 50 runs and they got better as they spent more time at the wicket. Our shot selection has been horrible. There’s def- initely no excuse for scoring just 237 in the first innings,” Clarke said.
However, the rest of the team also came under heavy criticism from the skipper. “I would think we would have come a long way if we learn from out mistakes from the first two Tests. However, if we learnt anything from the first Test, we certainly didn’t display it in the second,” he said.
“As batsmen, we let our partners down at the other end, as bowlers, we bowled bad overs and we also dropped catches. As a team we’re letting each other down, and that hurts the most.”
Now, as one of the senior batsmen in the team, Clarke says the onus is on him. “I have no choice now but to bat higher in the order, especially in these conditions.”