Unbending schedule was against Cricket Australia

A muddled Cricket Australia has painted itself as a victim of circumstances which hampered the preparation of the nation’s humiliated Test team.

The unprecedented loss of three Ashes Tests by an innings will force a thorough review of the way CA handles its cricketers, both in developing youth and handling those chosen for Test matches.

However the body’s headlong pursuit of the Twenty20 dollar, to be consummated by the introduction of an expansive city-based competition next summer, shows that priorities drifted away from the five-day game quite some time ago.

Another T20 competition, the Champions League in South Africa, was allowed to impinge upon the pre-seasons of several contracted players, particularly Mike Hussey and Doug Bollinger.

While CA chief executive James Sutherland pointed to Hussey’s individual success as proof that such concerns are trifling, the demise of Bollinger as a Test bowler was arguably pivotal to the problems experienced by the pace attack this summer.

“Circumstances sometimes don’t allow you for the ideal preparation – there’s no perfect world situation with these sorts of preparations,” said Sutherland.

“For us it’s actually more difficult than it is for England at times because we share the same space in the calendar as eight or nine other countries so we are always in a position of having to reciprocate in and around our summer period, so it’s always a very busy period for us.

“I’m not discounting the fact we couldn’t look at the way in which we prepared, but I think to point the finger to preparation is rubbish.

“We actually played more Test cricket than England did leading into the Ashes series.

“I know we all want to point the finger at someone or something, but there are lots of things that could’ve been done differently, could’ve been done better, and have to be done better for us to get ourselves back on top.”

A limited overs series against Sri Lanka preceding the Ashes provided another roadblock to the team’s planning and management, but Sutherland claimed there had been no other way.

“We had to play those matches, there was no other time to play those matches,” he said.

“We’re contractually committed to those matches and if you look at the players who took part in those matches we very carefully managed the workload of individuals through that.

“I’ve always said the preparation of players is an individual thing and we need to manage the workload of players individually.

“If we had our time again, would we have those matches? It was unavoidable. The reality is we wanted to play those matches at the end of the summer, but we couldn’t play them at the end of the summer because of the timing of the World Cup.”

Sutherland said there was no escaping the fact that Australia’s methods and performances had placed them an enormous distance behind England and others.

“We are a long way off the mark right now, there are things that need to be looked at and need to be changed,” he said.

“Things can’t continue to go down the same path that they have.”