Just the Boxing Day Australia needed
All out for 98 was not the Boxing Day the Australian team wanted, but as Robert Craddock argues in the Courier-Mail , it might be what they needed.
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
All out for 98 was not the Boxing Day the Australian team wanted, but as Robert Craddock argues in the Courier-Mail, it might be what they needed.
An Australian victory in this Ashes series would have only served to heighten Australia's belief that their system is going fine when it's clearly not producing young players of Test pedigree. They need an urgent review of their setup. If England win they deserve it. They banned wives from the tour where Australia took them everywhere. They chose an XI and stuck to them while Australia were forced to experiment. They arrived for this series even before Australia.
Greg Baum in the Age writes that it is Australia's lowest ebb since the Ashes summer of 1986-87, perhaps even lower than that.
But that Australian team featured Allan Border, Geoff Marsh and Steve Waugh, apostles to lead their generation from the wilderness. None such impress in this team.
Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald suggests Australia's batsmen have nobody to blame but themselves for the predicament they found themselves in on Boxing Day.
Had the Australians adapted their game to suit the conditions due diligence might have brought a respectable tally of 200 or so, and a glimmer of hope. Instead they drove without proper care and attention.
Brydon Coverdale is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets here