da heads bet： George Bailey has called Australia’s big defeat to India in the World T20 the “most disappointing game” of his captaincy tenure
da betsson： Abhishek Purohit in Mirpur30-Mar-2014George Bailey has called Australia’s big defeat to India in the World T20 the “most disappointing game” of his captaincy tenure. Australia were bowled out for 86 chasing 160, and Bailey was particularly gutted at the way his batsmen folded, saying they had failed to deliver the improvement that was asked of them after two close defeats to Pakistan and West Indies.”Unexpected. Disappointing. I’d go so far as to say it is the most disappointing game that I’ve led from this team for three years,” Bailey said. “I’ll give all credit to the Indian bowlers, they obviously bowled well. I certainly do not think our batters can hold their heads particularly high in terms of our shot selection, our match awareness, our game sense, all the stuff that we spoke about in the last game that we were not particularly happy with. We asked for improvement and we certainly did not have that.”When asked if there was embarrassment in addition to thedisappointment, Bailey said the former was limited only to himself.”If I was embarrassed I’d say it is with my own performance. I’mdisappointed with the team, with the way we batted but I have gotpretty big faith in these guys and I’m not sticking up for them interms of … we all could’ve made better decisions and done thingsdifferently if we had our chance again but I am not embarrassed foranyone, apart from myself.”Australia were not faced with a particularly demanding asking-rate atthe start of their chase but they tried too many shots and lost halftheir side before the halfway mark. Bailey said while Australia’soverall approach in the format was to be aggressive, it did nottranslate to being reckless.”If I am thinking back to our T20 form over the last 12 months or so,I reckon that is the first time we have scored under 170. So yep, wecertainly want to be aggressive and we want to dictate the game butthere does have to be a back-up plan. That is the responsibility of usin the middle order to understand where the game is at and you havegot a perfect example in the other side from the way Yuvraj (Singh)managed that innings from where India were. I think runs-wise, atabout the tenth-over mark, we were roughly the same. We had lost threeor four more wickets. That probably sums up our mindset and themistakes that we made.”Australia needed Bangladesh to defeat Pakistan in the afternoon gamefor them to stay alive in the tournament, but that wasn’t to be. Whenasked if having been knocked out before the start of the India gamemeant a dip in motivation levels, Bailey admitted his players’ mindsmay not have been entirely on the match, but refused to accept that asa reason for not performing well.”I hope not. Certainly not. Clichéd, but any team you are playing forAustralia, you would hate to think that people need extra motivation…that is not an excuse. We feel like we played a couple of good gamesof cricket but we have been on the losing side of them so for ustonight … without being disrespectful to Bangladesh, it would have beena shock to us if Bangladesh had beaten Pakistan so we were notarriving here expecting miracles.”There was enough for us to prove by playing India and playing wellagainst a side who we think are going to be close to tournamentfavourites, and to win that game and prove that we are a really goodside over here and we deserve to go better, but not to be.”
