Sri Lanka vs Australia 2016: Cricket Australia's CEO seeks reasons for failure
James Sutherland, the CEO of Cricket Australia is eager to know the reason for Australia’s failure in the Indian sub-consistent even after a lot of their stars spending time playing in what was once considered alien conditions. Australia recently lost the Test Series against Sri Lanka 3-0, and it was their 9th consecutive Test loss in Asia.
The team from ‘Down Under’ were beaten hands-down in the Test series and found themselves trapped to the spin-web duo of Rangana Herath and Lakshan Sandakan, who took the bulk share of the wickets in the series.
As per the reports of ESPN cricinfo, Sutherland said, "If you have a look going back in time over recent years, some of our Test cricketers are playing more in India than they've ever played before. They're used to subcontinental conditions through their experiences in the IPL and on other tours representing Australia.”
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Most of the Australian players play regularly in the Indian Premier League, so it is quite obvious they are acquainted with sub-continental wickets. But they failed to capitalise on the advantage.
“These are conditions we are more familiar with perhaps than we have been in decades gone by, and it comes back to the ability to adapt. That's something I'll be interested to hear more about” he added. This was the first time Sri Lanka won a Test series against Australia.
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The conditions in Sri Lanka is quite different to England and the ‘Baggy Greens’ should be able to adapt to the conditions to be the No. 1 team in the world feels the Cricket Australia official, and it needs to win matches at home and away to any country he added.
Regarding the matter he said, "It's probably a whole lot of different things. The critical thing is adaptability to conditions and that's what we ought to understand better. Clearly, conditions here are very different to England, which are very different to what we see on the subcontinent, and to be the best team in the world, to be the No. 1 team, you need to be able to win away, and that's what we're about."
Former Sri Lankan player Muttiah Muralitharan was roped in as a bowling consultant for the tour, but it hardly made any difference as they were outplayed in all the three ties. The pre-tour preparation could have been made more useful feels the Sutherland. "We're certainly disappointed with the performances of the team in this Sri Lankan series and the review will tell us more but I don't think we can complain in terms of the preparation we had over there in Sri Lanka," he said.