Coach expects his players to be hurting
Lehmann fumes after shock defeat
Until yesterday, the low point of Darren Lehmann’s gilded coaching stint with the Australian team had been a pair of insipid batting performances at the home of cricket just weeks after he was installed in the job.
Now, following a triumphant home summer in which his team regained the Ashes without missing a beat, triumphed over the world’s top ranked Test team on their own patch and rose (albeit briefly) to number one globally in the elite and 50-over forms he has thudded back to earth.
Not because they had an off day or two and were humbled by an equally credentialed rival, as was the case at Lord’s last July when England spanked them by 347 runs.
But in losing to Zimbabwe, a team that is only kept from the bottom rung of every indicator of aptitude among Test nations by the even greater perennial failure of Bangladesh, the gains made by Lehmann’s refreshingly straightforward method take on a slightly different hue.
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Using the sort of blunt assessment preferred by the former Test batsman, Australia was not only outplayed and outfoxed, they were worryingly undone by their own hand.
While Zimbabwe loaded up on spinners having rightly assessed (and, in fairness, prepared) a pitch that offered nothing for seamers and everything and a bit more for slow men who could generate some revs on the ball, the Australians stuck stubbornly to their preferred plan.
Which meant reducing their spin options and removing one of their best batsmen against spin – Steve Smith – from the starting XI, but also opting to rest their best and most feared pace bowler Mitchell Johnson who held a clear mental edge over the local batsmen.
Lehmann is prepared to take his share of the blame in the strategic wobble that has now made the answer to the sports trivia night question ‘when did Zimbabwe defeat Australia in a one-day international’ a multiple choice one.
But that doesn’t mean his players are going to miss out on one of the heated, behind-closed-doors sprays he can famously let rip when he has to.
“There’s probably not enough expletives in the English language at the moment for the way I’m feeling,” Lehmann said as darkness settled over the Harare Sports Club in the wake of his team’s loss and a thumping after party blared on in the background.
“But they’ve got to learn.
“We weren’t good enough today, and we’ve got to learn really quickly because teams are going to see that and they’re going to react to it.
“It’s just an embarrassing performance from us.
“It’s been 31 years (since Zimbabwe’s previous ODI win over Australia in the 1983 World Cup) and they outplayed us today, there’s no drama with that.
“But we batted really badly and we didn’t bowl that well either.
“We didn’t do anything well.
“It’s just embarrassing for everyone involved in the touring party, and I hope they’re hurting – they should be.”
The loss of Michael Clarke, Australia’s foremost batsman and best player of spin bowling, who returns home today to learn the full extent of his hamstring injury means the team’s chances of winning this tri-series have sustained a further blow.
Indeed, should Australia suffer a repeat of last Wednesday’s loss to South Africa and Zimbabwe overcome their African neighbours when they meet in the last preliminary match on Thursday, then Australia faces the ignominy of not even reaching the tournament final.
Of course, that simply can’t happen.
After all, it’s 15 years since Zimbabwe last defeated South Africa in an ODI and their form trend line since then has dipped so unerringly down that the heavyweight teams of world cricket can turn up safe in the knowledge they will win regardless of conditions and personnel.
But Lehmann concedes that lessons must be heeded from yesterday’s stumble.
Learned quickly, and by everyone including the national selection panel of which he is a member along with chair Rod Marsh, Mark Waugh and Trevor Hohns who is currently in Harare.
“It’s always a tough call, and it’s the selectors call,” Lehmann said when asked point blank if the selectors got the make-up of yesterday’s team wrong by leaving out Johnson and Smith, both of whom return for tomorrow’s match which confirms they weren’t sidelined for fitness reasons.
“We give the captain a side and we make a call, so if we got that wrong we would put our hands up.
“And by the end of the result, we probably thought we did get it wrong.
“We don’t expect to lose against Zimbabwe whatever side we put out.
“But we did, and we got outplayed and we have to accept the criticism that comes our way as a selection panel, and as a coach and as players.
“Individuals have to take account of themselves, so do we as coaching staff and selectors.
“We’re all in it together so we have to address it really quickly.”
But when asked if his players, indeed the entire touring party, had taken the lightweight home nation a little too lightly Lehmann was unequivocal.
“No,” he said without blinking.
“If we can’t beat Zimbabwe with that side we’ve got problems.
“So we’ve got to sort them out.
“We’ve got to understand what we need to do better.
“The positive is you find about a few people along the way, and there’s nothing wrong with that either.”
That process began in the hours immediately after one of Australia’s most humbling cricket losses, and will continue later today when the team returns to the scene of the accident to fine tune preparations for South Africa.
And possibly next Saturday’s final.