Australia batting coach Michael Di Venuto, who has been instrumental in the rise of batting great Steve Smith as a long time coach of the national side, admitted that the team’s batsmen did not trust their defence during their shocking surrender to the Indian spinner in the second innings of the second Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2022-23.
Australia collapsed from 85/2 to 113 all-out in an embarrassing and shocking display of batting, overusing the sweep and the reverse sweep shots which led to their downfall. It all began with Steve Smith, arguably the world’s best batsman currently in the format, going for the sweep shot against his nemesis Ravichandran Ashwin.
The sweep shot has never been a regular ploy of attack for Steve Smith in all Test cricket that he has played so far, but his use of the stroke led to his dismissal which also witnessed the others playing the stroke in a shocking collapse.
Australia lost 8 wickets for just 28 runs in a space of 70-odd deliveries as India all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja returned with 7/42 in the second innings and overall 10 wickets in the game to win the Test for India, for which he also won the Man of the Match award — a prize that he claimed in the first Test at Nagpur as well.
Di Venuto admitted that while Australian batsmen were poor with their approach in the second innings in New Delhi, he backed them to perform well and bat more responsibly going forward.
The Australian batting coach was quoted as saying by cricket.com.au,
“Plans certainly weren’t wrong. Our plans are good, but if people go away from their plans they’re going to get in trouble, as we saw.
“We were almost ahead of the game, and the feeling just looking at it was ‘geez, if we just get another 50 runs real quick’ which you can’t do in this country. We’ve spoken about that, so it’s not like it’s something new.
“But pressure does strange things and we saw a lot of people go out and try and sweep their way to a score. It’s not all doom and gloom, but the 90 minutes of batting certainly wasn’t anything special,”
he added.
Di Venuto praised Usman Khawaja in particular, who used both the sweep and reverse sweep shots to his benefit to make 81 during Australia’s first innings.
“Uz (Khawaja) played beautifully in the first innings (at Delhi), and has through Pakistan and the subcontinent,”
Di Venuto said.
“It (sweeping) is part of his game, but he also picks the balls to do it. It’s smart, he’s not using it as a form of defence and I think that’s what happened towards the back end (of Australia’s second innings),”
the batting coach added.