Our batting collapses need to stop: Steven Smith

Australian captain Steven Smith had some stern words for his men after the visitors suffered their second defeat in as many games in the ongoing limited overs series against India. Smith wasn’t pleased and said that their regular batting collapses in all formats “need to stop” and are “not good enough”. He also added that the Australian batsmen got ‘panicked’, and they made many poor decisions.

Chasing 253 to win, the visitors were restricted to 148/8 at one stage. They ended up losing the match by 50 runs. The Indian bowlers were once again in a dominating position. Bhuvneshwar Kumar ended with outstanding figures of 3/9, while spinner Kuldeep Yadav bagged a hat-trick.

It’s happening a bit too often: Smith

“It’s happening a bit too often for my liking, to be honest with you, in all forms of cricket,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of collapses and we need to stop. It’s easy to just sit here and say ‘it needs to stop’, but when you get out in the middle you have to change what you’re doing because it’s not working.” he added.

“Watching the ball closer or maybe the guys are trying to watch it too closely and forgetting about just playing the game. It’s a hard one to put my finger on. But whatever it is, it needs to change and we need to make better decisions when we’re under pressure and start playing the game properly. Because we’re having too many collapses and it’s not good enough.” a furious Smith added.

“Two-fifty, we should be getting that on that wicket. We made too many poor decisions again under pressure and we’re not executing our skills well enough. The guys have trained really well and it’s now about getting out in the middle and executing your skills when you’re under pressure and not panicking. I think we panicked last game a little bit and in this game, we just couldn’t get the partnerships. We’re making silly errors when we’re under pressure.” Smith said.