Buchanan refuses to hit the panic button

John Buchanan, the Australian coach, has refused to hit the panic button, even after Australia's fourth consecutive loss, including a humbling at the hands of Bangladesh. "I have not experienced anything like this with this particular team," Buchanan told Angus Fraser in an interview in The Independent. "We are in a situation we have never been in before. In the past when we have had a loss, the team has rebounded pretty quickly. But we are now in new territory and, I say this tongue in cheek, England are in new territory, too. It will be interesting to see how they deal with that."

Buchanan believed that the team would bounce back soon enough. "We will definitely come out of it and I think we will be better for the whole experience," he said. "The skill of the players is unquestionable, and they have not lost that in the last couple of months."

Looking ahead, Buchanan pointed out what the team needed to do, and the pitfalls they needed to avoid. ""The first thing I have to do with everyone is keep what is taking place in perspective," he said. "There is always a danger that you can over-analyse when things are not going well, and this can potentially lead to players not wanting to back their skill or their decision-making.

"You don't want the players thinking, 'I'd better not do this in case it leads to an error'. I would rather they had a go, because at least then they have made a decision. If it then goes wrong it comes down to execution or poor decision-making. But at least then you have something to work with, which is not the case when you make no decision at all.

"We also have to make sure that we don't get caught up in the emotion of what is going on. We have to concentrate on the process that has made us a good side.

Buchanan attributed his team's failures to a lack of rigorous cricket in the recent past, and felt that the break they had may have done them more harm than good. "We may have lost today [Sunday] but I thought there were far more encouraging signs," said Buchanan. "We were up for the game, you could see that in the players' body language, and I hope it will be like this from now on. But I still believe that the performances are a result of us having a good break. Our skills at this moment in time are not bad but it has been the application of them in the one-day game that is the problem. And the one-day game asks questions of you straight away.

"To play good one-day cricket you need a good cricket base underneath you. We have some good training underneath us, but we have not got a lot of game-time. And this means that when the skills of the players are being tested it is difficult for them to grab the right menu. In the games we have played every player has grabbed a bit of the menu but as of yet they have not been able to grab the whole lot."

Australia's next game in the NatWest Series is against England - a day-nighter at Durham on Thursday, June 23.