Former Australia Coach Unhappy With Team’s Lack of Practice Before Ashes

Ahead of this year’s Border-Gavaskar trophy, the Australia team had opted to not take up practice matches in India. Australia refused citing the reasons that the pitches provided during the practice would resemble no similarities to those on the game day. Their rejection to not play practice games did not work well as the team struggled massively in the first 2 games of the Border-Gavaskar trophy.

Now, Australia will take on England in the Ashes this summer. Now, former Australian coach Darren Lehmann has openly expressed his displeasure over the team’s wish to not play the practice games. Some of the players from the Australia team are playing IPL while others are either playing county cricket or are back at home. The Australian team will just play 1 World Test Championship final before commencing the Ashes.

Darren Lehmann confident about Australia winning Ashes

In preparation for the highly anticipated Test series, the Australian team is reportedly putting a priority on maintaining their mental health and physical fitness. Australia has not played a warm-up practice match in almost four years and will most likely continue the same way. Before the World Test Championship Australia will have their camp in Beckenham. “You need games to acclimatize first and foremost. To get used to the ball and wickets and pressure. No tour game is not a good idea. I hope it works but if it doesn’t, who made that decision will be asked. I think we win the Ashes anyway 3-1, but if we don’t, wow,” Darren Lehmann said.

Interestingly, for the first time in years, Australia will go into the Ashes without playing a practice game. Chief selector George Bailey last month said, “It feels like this is becoming the norm for Test tours, around tour games. It feels like there’s more tours that you don’t have one than when you do, so our team’s reasonably well prepared in terms of knowing what you need outside of those. “

Squad for Ashes:

Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Marcus Harris, Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Todd Murphy, Matthew Renshaw, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, David Warner