Waugh defends Buchanan over heavy training

Steve Waugh has jumped to the defence of John Buchanan after Shane Warne said the Australia coach should take responsibility for having trained his team 'into the ground'. Waugh said blaming Buchanan for the CB Series loss to England was unfair.

"That's rubbish," Waugh told AAP. "The guys aren't silly. Ricky [Ponting] and the senior players have a major input into how the team functions and how much training to do, so I'm very sceptical of that. They've got a lot of support staff, they're very professional."

Warne said it was obvious that the players were tired by the time the CB Series finals came around, which he believed was a result of their heavy taper-training workload. But Waugh argued that the losses were unavoidable.

"I think they've played such good cricket that at some stage or other they were going to have to lose a couple of games," Waugh said. "It's humanly impossible to win every game and to be at your peak every time.

"They fell off the mark a little bit in the last few games, but they'll make sure that they taper right, they peak at the right time, and get themselves ready. I think you'll see an improvement from now and they'll go to the World Cup very confident."

Waugh said the timing of Australia's flat period - in the lead-up to their World Cup defence - was probably a blessing. "You always want to be under pressure," he said. "It's a much better situation than going into a World Cup and you feel as though everything is perfect and you might have peaked too early."