Mickey Arthur reveals rationale behind scheduling back to back Ashes

Mickey Arthur reveals Australia’s plans

Former Australian coach Mickey Arthur has revealed the whole idea behind scheduling back to back Ashes series. Arthur said that captain Michael Clarke and himself wanted to take a good look at England players in the away series before putting their best foot forward at home to regain the Ashes.

Speaking to the ABC Radio, Arthur said: “We had a goal that I will reveal. We wanted to try to push England really hard in England, but we wanted to win in Australia, this is what Michael and I wanted to do.

“We didn’t go into the series ever to lose it, but we wanted to develop enough intelligence on all the England players, we had a lot but there was going to be some current stuff we could use.

“We were going to really push them close, give the players in our team the confidence to see that England could get beaten, and then go for them in Australia. That was how we wanted to go about our escapade there.”

England have already won the series with one more Test to go. Arthur also believes that no matter how good the team selection had been, it would not have had any impact on the results.

“You could have put anybody in [the team], the results were going to be the results because that is what we’ve got at the moment. That is the current crop of players. But as coaches it’s such a good challenge because there’s so much unfulfilled potential that you can make better.”

Reflecting back on the tour to India where his team got whitewashed in the four match Test series, Arthur said: “India was a really tough tour for us in so many ways.”

“I’ve been privileged to tour India a couple of times and those were the worst conditions that I’d ever seen. They hijacked us, and they clearly wanted revenge for the 4-0 series win we had got when they toured here the last time.”

Arthur also did not find any fault in India preparing tracks that suited their spinners.

He added: “One goes back to the Perth Test where the wicket was green and we played to our strengths and won the Test in two and a half days. They clearly wanted retribution for that and produced some of the toughest conditions I’d ever seen. They went out of their way to prepare those conditions and I can’t argue with that.”

Arthur admitted that he has been following the ongoing Ashes series very closely.

He said: “I’ve been watching every ball of the Ashes. My family has been saying ‘let it go’ and I can’t. I’ve spent too much time with these boys trying to make them better cricketers, I’ve got to watch it.

“I am talking to the television. The funny thing as a coach is with a trained eye and knowing the psyche of all the players, I can sit and watch something developing and know what’s going to happen an over later. I’m going ‘don’t do that again, keep hitting straight, they’re trying to set you up for the lbw … keep hitting straight, oh across the line, damn lbw again’.”