To be the No. 1 team, you need to be able to win away: James Sutherland

Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland has questioned the ability of the Australian players to adjust and adapt to the spin bowling. Sutherland feels that despite playing in the sub-continental conditions more in recent years, their performance graph in the Asia has gone down badly.

“If you have a look going back in time over recent years, some of our Test cricketers are playing more in India than they’ve ever played before. They’re used to sub-continental conditions through their experiences in the IPL and on other tours representing Australia.”

“These are conditions we are more familiar with perhaps than we have been in decades gone by, and it comes back to the ability to adapt. That’s something I’ll be interested to hear more about,” Sutherland told ESPNCricinfo.

He also believes that for Australia to be the best team in the Test format they need to win more in foreign conditions.

“It’s probably a whole lot of different things. The critical thing is adaptability to conditions and that’s what we ought to understand better. Clearly, conditions here are very different to England, which are very different to what we see on the subcontinent, and to be the best team in the world, to be the No. 1 team, you need to be able to win away, and that’s what we’re about.”

He agrees that they did not lack in preparation but a review will help them analyse why they failed in the Test series.

“We’re certainly disappointed with the performances of the team in this Sri Lankan series and the review will tell us more but I don’t think we can complain in terms of the preparation we had over there in Sri Lanka.”

Australia went to Sri Lanka as the No. 1 and began as the favorites against a relatively weak and inexperienced Lankan side. However, the Aussies were completely dominated by the Lankan spin bowling attack and were consequently whitewashed 3-0. This thrashing also resulted in them losing the No.1 spot and slipping down to No.3 behind Pakistan and India.