The Australian side did hammer down the West Indies in the current series but there has been a serious issue with their pacers. The Australians are getting the wickets they want, but there have been constant instances when they took a wicket and it turned out to be a no-ball because of the bowler overstepping. Australia’s coach Darren Lehmann is not happy with the team’s basics.
Carlos Braithwaite was a lucky man on his debut when he was declared out twice but was called back as the bowler, James Pattinson overstepped both the times. Next up was Josh Hazlewood when he overstepped the moment Darren Bravo was caught behind.
Darren Lehmann was obviously unhappy with the performance of his fast bowlers due to this reason and his anger was justified. Although Australia won later on the 4th day, Lehmann said that he communicated his ire to the players.
He said, “It's pretty obvious who I stared down, Jimmy avoided me at lunchtime yesterday... that would have been at the yelling stage. We don't mean to bowl them but we've got to get better at those sort of basics. We've been a bit lax at training with that – so that's certainly a change for our preparation in Sydney.”
Though the no-balls were not match-turners, as West Indies were chasing a massive 460, but surely it was a huge mistake for an international bowler to make at this level.
West Indies added 72 runs after Jimmy Pattinson overstepped and gave Braithwaite another chance. The batting was at 101/6 and Carlos was finally dismissed when the Indies reached 173/7.
Hazlewood’s blunder was taken care by Peter Siddle when he got Darren Bravo in a similar fashion and Bravo could only add 9 runs after Hazlewood entry to the “No-Ball Wicket Club.” Hazlewood’s over stepping was just by millimetres.
Even Australian captain Steven Smith expressed his displeasure as he said, “We made it a little bit difficult for ourselves, overstepping the mark a few times, and we had to take 23 wickets instead of 20.”
Australia might be having a comfortable series at home, but these basics need to be sorted out as they are taking more wickets than the credit they are getting for it. They face India and New Zealand ahead in the new year and coach Lehmann would be making sure that these mistakes don’t repeat.
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