Barring the milestone of earning his 100th ODI cap, Steve Smith has had little to smile during this tour to India.
In each of the three matches, the Australia captain — despite faring well with the bat — has dropped a catch, has seen his batting unit flounder in key moments and thus faced the ignominy of having lost the five-match ODI series against an on-song India with two matches still left.
No wonder he had a stern warning for his teammates after suffering another disappointing loss in Indore on Sunday. “I’ll certainly like to start winning some games in every format, to be honest. Our results haven’t been good enough and we need to turn them around,” Smith said.
After electing to bat, on the best surface for batting in the series so far, Australia appeared to be heading for a mammoth total, with the score 224 for two at the end of the 38th over.
Despite centurion Aaron Finch having perished, the platform was set for a 330-plus total, a must for putting India’s batsmen under pressure at the Holkar Stadium. However, with India’s bowlers tightening the noose around them, the Australian batsmen couldn’t get anything going and couldn’t even score at a run-a-ball in the last 12 overs.
Unable to execute
“We just weren’t able to execute it in the back end. We got 69 off the last 74 balls and lost five wickets. If we had got to 330-340, which we probably should have done, things certainly could have been different,” Smith said.
“We are quite often getting ourselves into good positions but not taking advantage of those. Today was no different. We continually address it. It is just hard to put your finger on it what we are actually doing or not doing to get the results we are after. Today, it was about execution.”
With the series lost, Smith now has a huge challenge to help his teammates keep their chins up in the remaining two ODIs and avoid a whitewash. “It’s always hard when you lose. Particularly when we’re down three-nil at the moment.
“We’ve got to continue to try and motivate them and get them up for the next two games,” he said. “We’ve got to start winning games. I think we’ve lost 13 of the last 15 we’ve played away with two being no results. That’s pretty ordinary. Not good enough for an Australian cricket team. We need to start turning the results around and winning some games.”
