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          Wade: 'Not good enough from an Australian cricket team'

          • Andrew McGlashan, Deputy editor, ESPNcricinfoAug 9, 2021, 07:30 AM
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              Deputy Editor Andrew arrived at ESPNcricinfo via Manchester and Cape Town, after finding the assistant editor at a weak moment as he watched England's batting collapse in the Newlands Test. Andrew began his cricket writing as a freelance covering Lancashire during 2004 when they were relegated in the County Championship. In fact, they were top of the table when he began reporting on them but things went dramatically downhill. He likes to let people know that he is a supporter of county cricket, a fact his colleagues will testify to and bemoan in equal quantities.

          Australia captain Matthew Wade called his side's capitulation in the final T20I against Bangladesh "not good enough for an Australian cricket team" and said it was down to the batters to find ways to score runs in tough conditions.

          The series concluded with Australia bowled out for 62, their lowest T20I total, having made a high score of 121 across the five matches.

          While echoing Dan Christian's remarks that the surfaces were unlike any he had played T20 cricket on, and did not expect them to be replicated at the T20 World Cup, Wade noted how Bangladesh had been able to wrangle their way to enough runs in four out of the five matches and that spin had also caused problems in the West Indies where Australia also lost 4-1.

          "There's not a lot of positives to take out of it, to get beaten in the fashion we did, especially tonight, was not good enough from an Australian cricket team regardless of the personnel we've got here," Wade said. "The reality is we need to get better at spin, myself included. There's a lot of players in this team who need to find a way to score runs in these conditions.

          "[Bangladesh] are a terrific team in their own conditions, their spinners bowled really well, and they still found a way to find the extra runs and that's something we can definitely get better at doing. Whether they came a little harder at the front and that is something we maybe needed to do earlier."

          Wade was confident the less experienced batters among the group would not carry baggage away from this tour and laid the blame for the run-scoring woes to the more senior figures.

          "I do not blame the young players one bit," he said. "Myself, Moises [Henriques], Dan Christian, we are all experienced players and we needed to do better. Those [younger] guys got the opportunity to experience these conditions and if they take it as a learning opportunity to become better players, as we all should, then at least we've learnt something.

          "I've played a lot of cricket and they are certainly the most challenging T20 international pitches I've ever played on. What they've seen out here will be very valuable going forward but it's on the senior batting group, we needed to get more runs. If the batters can go back and find a way to get those extra runs in challenging conditions that will hold us in good stead."

          The final lead-in to the World Cup for Australia remains to be confirmed with talk of a potential series against Afghanistan and West Indies in Sri Lanka which would overlap with the resumption of the IPL. Wade said he expected all the players who opted out of this tour due to bubble fatigue to be available for selection. Steven Smith was kept out with an elbow injury and how someone of his skill was missed in Bangladesh.