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The Kookaburras have been delt a stinging reality check ahead of the Champions Trophy in the form of a 3-1 series defeat to India.
Australia went down 3-1 to the visitors in Perth on Sunday night, to close out the series with three consecutive losses – having not lost since January prior to this matchup.
Newly-appointed head coach Graham Reid will turn his focus to the Champions Trophy, to be held in Bhubaneswar, India, from December 6 – with a squad to be announced this week.
Despite Sunday’s loss, which was propelled by a double to India’s Akashdeep Singh, Reid remained upbeat about Australia’s improvement in the series, which included blooding several young stars in the past week.
“If you look behind the scoreboard, the internal scores and stats were great, with the team back to where they needed to be,” he said.
“One of the biggest things to take out of this series is that the Kookaburras daily training environment is very important, which is why we try to centralise train them.
“We have just played a team who have been together for three years, and our guys have only been together for five days.
“The idea behind this series was to give the guys some experience and exposure, and I think we have achieved that.”
After Singh had opened the scoring, Australia levelled through Tom Craig at the 36th minute mark, but Singh and Uthappa Sannuvanda returned fire with goals in the 50th and 53rd minute to secure the win.
Simon Orchard returned from a broken thumb to make his first appearance of the series, but was disappointed with the result.
“We haven’t played as well as we hoped over the last week however, in saying that tonight was a better performance in creating opportunities and limiting India’s opportunities,” he said.
“It’s unfortunate that we couldn’t convert our opportunities, and they managed to sneak a few goals in.”
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