Quantcast

Ugly record looms amid batting blues

It hasn't happened in 128 years - and Australia's batsmen have one more Test to keep it that way

Australia today embarks on the final leg of their failed Test campaign in Sri Lanka, with an hour-long bus ride along the swish new Galle-Colombo expressway to contemplate the unwanted batting record staring back at them.

It has been more than a century – indeed, more than a decade before the turn of the 20th Century – since an Australian batting line-up has produced such a minimal individual return in a Test series of at least two matches.

So far, in the two Tests on Sri Lankan soil that the home team have won comfortably, skipper Steve Smith is the only Australian batsman to have notched a half-century, and none have come close to reaching three figures.

While Test series without a century-maker are not rare – it most recently happened to the Australians on their two-Test series against Pakistan in England in 2010 and the year before during the 2-0 home summer trouncing of the West Indies – they are usually accompanied by a surfeit of 50-plus scores.

Seven of them against Pakistan, and 15 in the three-match series against the West Indies including three scores in the 90s by then openers Simon Katich and Shane Watson.

Quick Single: Head added to Sri Lanka tour squad

But not since the bowler-dominated 1888 Ashes series in England, where Australia failed to reach 150 in all six of their innings, has their specialist bating line-up finished a three-Test series with a return from their batters (specialist or otherwise) of no centuries and as few fifties.

The only teams to have gone through a three-Test series since the turn of the 20th Century with just one player raising their bat, and not to celebrate a hundred, are South Africa in the matches they played against England on their 1912 tour that also included three far more productive batting Tests against Australia.

And Lee Germon's New Zealand team on their 1995 tour to India, where rain ruined two of the three Tests to the extent that the Black Caps only managed two completed innings for the series.

Smith's patient 55 in more than two-and-a-half hours during the second innings of the opening Test at Pallekele last month remains Australia's only batting milestone of the series to date, and only two others have reached 40 across the four innings.

Adam Voges' 47 in the first innings at Pallekele, and David Warner's dual scores of 42 and 41 in the reigning Test champions' series-deciding 229-run loss at Galle last week.

'There might be need for some changes': Smith

But amid the repeated failings of the top six that was so dominant during the previous Australian summer and then the 2-0 series win over the Black Caps in New Zealand, only allrounder Mitchell Marsh has found his way to double figures in all four innings in Sri Lanka.

An achievement that only serves to heighten the 24-year-old's frustration at being unable to convert those regular starts into a score of substance that his team has been so sadly lacking.

And which has eluded him since making a career-high 87 in his debut series against Pakistan in spin friendly conditions in the UAE two years ago, the sole half-century of his 17-match Test career to date.

"It's certainly been frustrating that I haven't been able to capitalise on a few good starts over here," Marsh said today before the Australians hit the road for Colombo where the final Test of the series starts on Saturday.

"I feel like I'm batting really well at the moment, I've got a clear mind going out to bat and it's just about doing it for longer.

"Our batting group has managed to get starts ... something we pride ourselves on is when we get to 20 or 30 we go on with it.

Quick Single: ICC releases latest Test player rankings

"If we had one or two blokes do that (in this series), then the last few Test matches would be different games.

"That's been the disappointing thing as a batting unit so we'll be looking forward to rectifying that in the next Test."

Combatting spin bowling was the focus of yesterday's two-hour optional training session on the Galle pitch that was supposed to be hosting the fourth day of a Test, which had instead been wrapped up shortly after lunch on day three.

The more aggressive approach shown by some of the Australian batters in their second innings the previous day, most notably Voges who reversed swept his way to 28, continued yesterday with a regular array of lofted shots to and over the rope.

The most telling blows coming from Marsh's older brother, Shaun, who several times thumped the spinners over the long-on boundary and almost through the huge glass windows of the stadium's media centre as he made his case for inclusion in the final dead-rubber Test.

It reflects a change in strategy prompted by the failure of the top-order to apply pressure to Sri Lanka's three-pronged spin attack, but also informed by the manner in which the home team's batters – in particular the series' lone century maker Kusal Mendis – have gone about their work.

Quick Single: Geelong set to host T20 international

"Probably the one thing I've noticed is that they (Sri Lanka's batters) are extremely positive from ball one," Mitchell Marsh said.

"That's helped get our spinners off their length and being able to rotate the strike.

"That was something we tried to do in the second innings of this last Test match, and I'm sure it's something we'll try to do in the next Test.

"We decided that we wanted to be a bit more positive and show a lot more intent, certainly early on in our innings to try and hit the spinners off their lengths.

"And try and get the field out so there's a few more gaps to get off strike.

"That was the plan I thought we did it reasonably well, it was just the fact that we didn't do it for long enough."

Quick Single: O'Keefe fined $10k by CA

The Australians are also acutely aware of what a third consecutive Test loss, apart from being the first time they have suffered a series whitewash at the hands of Sri Lanka, would mean to their aspirations of holding on to the number one Test team crown they secured after their win in NZ last February.

Should England and India win the remaining Tests of their current series against Pakistan and the West Indies respectively, then Australia will slip to third on the rankings table regardless of the result of the final Test against Sri Lanka.

But if Australia can find a way to turn around their performance and steal a consolation win on the traditionally batter-friendly pitch at Colombo's SSC Ground, and results in the other concurrent series fall their way, they may hang on at the top of the rankings table.

Albeit by the slimmest of margins.

"It means a hell of a lot," Marsh said in comparing the value the Australian team places on the global rankings to the premiership cups on offer to the nation's various football codes.

"It's what we strive for.

"In the Test arena you don't play for a premiership, you play to be number one in the world.

"Any team that gets knocked off the perch as number one Test team in the world, it would certainly hurt everyone."