Australian cricket team was tamed 4-1 by India after Virat Kohli-led team India managed to win the fifth One-Day International by seven wickets. Australia won the toss and opted to bat first. They lost wickets at regular intervals and that did not help as they managed to set India, the home team, a target of 243 runs, which looked easy for a team in good form. Rohit Sharma displayed class as he brought up yet another century. Rohit along with Rahane stitched together a partnership in excess of 100 runs.
“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 explained in the post-match press conference. “Australia won the penultimate game in Bangalore, but struggled to compete against India in the other games,” said Smith.
“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,” stated the Australian skipper.
“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,” he added.
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“Virat set some really good fields and stopped us from hitting and I don’t think we adapted well enough,” Smith said. “Today was probably a day when we could have used softer hands, played a bit square and hit the ball into the gaps instead of actually hitting the ball down the ground. We probably didn’t adapt as well as we would have liked to,” said the World’s No 1 Test batsman.
Smith added: “Some guys are back playing the domestic one-day competition at the moment, and yeah, there’re some guys there that can put pressure on the guys that are here.”
“The results haven’t been good enough and we want our guys to perform consistently. We will have a good look at the one-day competition back home and hopefully a few guys can jump out of the pack and score big runs and bowl really well as well,” Smith concluded.
