CA blames circumstances for not having ideal preparations for Oz Ashes campaign
By ANISaturday, January 8, 2011
MELBOURNE - Cricket Australia has said that it has been a victim of circumstances, which hampered the preparation of the Test team resulting in the unprecedented loss of three Ashes Tests by an innings.
However, concerns have been raised that CA’s pursuit for the Twenty20 gains shows that priorities drifted away from the five-day game quite some time ago.
CA chief executive James Sutherland pointed to Mike Hussey’s individual success as proof that such concerns are trifling, but the demise of Bollinger as a Test bowler was arguably pivotal to the problems experienced by the pace attack this summer, The Age reports.
“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,” he said.
“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,” Sutherland said.
“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,” he said.
A limited overs series against Sri Lanka preceding the Ashes provided another roadblock to the team’s planning, but Sutherland claimed there had been no other way.
“We had to play those matches, there was no other time to play those matches. We’re contractually committed to those matches and if you look at the players who took part in those matches we carefully managed the workload of individuals through that,” he said. (ANI)
