The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

Wade: Aussies must improve against spin

Autoplay in... 6 (Cancel)
Up Next No more videos! Playlist is empty -
Replay
Cancel
Next
9th August, 2021
13

Acting captain Matthew Wade says Australia’s batsmen must improve against spin bowling after his team were dismissed for their lowest Twenty20 international total in a humiliating loss to Bangladesh.

Chasing Bangladesh’s 8-122, Australia lost 8-24 to be bowled out for 62 in just 13.4 overs and crash to a 60-run defeat in their series’ fifth and final match in Dhaka on Monday.

Australia’s previous lowest score was 79 against England in Southampton in 2005 in just the second T20 played.

The 4-1 series loss was the same result as last month’s T20 games in the West Indies.

Australia have lost five successive T20 series and won just six of their last 21 matches.

Apart from Mitchell Marsh (156 runs at 31.20), no Australian scored more than 57 runs in the Bangladesh series.

Australia was missing seven established players including Pat Cummins, Glenn Maxwell, Steve Smith and David Warner while captain Aaron Finch missed much of the tour with a knee injury.

“Tonight was not good enough for an Australian cricket team regardless of the personnel we’ve got here,” Wade said.

Advertisement

Wade – who made just 20 runs in the first four games – top scored on Monday with a run-a-ball 22 with slow bowler Shakib Al Hasan (4-9) and Mohammad Saifuddin (3-12) Bangladesh’s chief destroyers.

Al Hasan’s haul helped him become the second bowler to take 100 T20 wickets.

Ben McDermott (17 off 16) was the only other Australian to make double figures.

Australia’s highest score of the T20 series in Bangladesh was 121.

“I think the reality is we know we need to get better at spin, myself included,” Wade said.

“There’s a lot of players in this team that we need to find a way to score runs in these conditions.”

Australia went into the final game with three specialist spinners, with the recalled Adam Zampa joining Ashton Agar and Mitchell Swepson.

Advertisement

Zampa (1-24) trapped Shakib Al Hasan LBW.

It was Zampa’s 52nd T20 scalp, making him Australia’s all-time wicket-taker in the format, leapfrogging Mitchell Starc who was rested for the series’ last two games.

Dan Christian (2-17) took his first T20 wickets in seven and a half years stretching back to February 2014.

Australia’s only selected paceman Nathan Ellis (2-16) followed up his hat-trick on debut last week with another impressive display.

Wade doubted Australia would encounter similar conditions at the World Cup in the United Arab Emirates and Oman in October and November and expected a full strength line-up at the tournament.

Smith, Warner and Cummins haven’t played a T20 since last year, but Wade wasn’t concerned if Australia didn’t have any more lead-up matches to the World Cup.

“It’s not vital that we all play a game together before the World Cup, we’ve all played plenty of cricket together,” said Wade, who could find some positives from their disappointing T20 series.

Advertisement

“The exposure some of our younger players got to these conditions was obviously a positive going forward.

“The way Mitchell Marsh played here and in the West Indies was a huge step forward in his international career.

“Nathan Ellis got some exposure, AJ Tye bowled really, really well.”

© AAP

close