Australia’s head coach Andrew McDonald made no secret of his team’s capitulation in the second innings of the second Test here, saying they had “failed the exam” of India. Australia, who appeared to be set up well for the challenge with 61 for one on stumps on day 2, lost nine wickets in the second innings for just 48 runs to be all out for 113. India then reached the winning target of 115 for losing four wickets to take a 2–0 lead and retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
“Our methods will be criticized, and rightly so,” McDonald told the Australian Associated Press on Monday.
“If at the end of day two you said our preparation was good (with Australia on 61/1) you would probably have a different view, but within an hour (on day 3) people are starting to criticize what happened in Past…
“And day three, as good as we could have been and we failed under India’s scrutiny,” added McDonald, who replaced Justin Langer as head coach following Australia’s 4-0 win in the Ashes.
The coach said that, as far as he understood, the preparation camp in Bengaluru on winding roads had provided sufficient preparation for the spin test.
“I still wouldn’t have changed what we did leading up to it, there’s no question about that,” McDonald said Monday.
“I think they (squad) had a really good preparation in Bangalore, so there are no excuses,” the coach added.
He also said some players deviated from their time-tested game plan, resulting in the second humiliating loss.
“There were some people who clearly deviated from the game plan that made them successful over time and that’s for us as a collective. We’ve got to be better than that, that’s the bottom line, we’ve got to own it and We’re not here to shy away from saying that wasn’t good enough.” The third Test at Indore from 1 March could see Australia usher in major changes to the squad, especially as pace bowler Mitchell Starc and all-rounder Cameron Green were expected to be fit after missing the first two games.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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