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Mark Taylor believes Australia’s continuing failures in Twenty20 series highlights a lack of quality in the nation’s cricket system.
Having never lost a T20 match to Bangladesh, Australia went down three times in four days to lose it’s fifth T20 series in a row just two months out from the T20 World Cup in the UAE.
On Saturday morning (AEST) Australia failed to chase a target of 128 on a slow, low pitch, losing by 10 runs despite Mitchell Marsh, the only batsman to enhance his reputation on this tour, making another half-century (51 in 47 balls).
Mitch Marsh was the only Australian batsman to give a good account.Credit:Getty
Even with the mitigating circumstances of playing in unfamiliar conditions without some of the team’s best players, Taylor said he was surprised Australia had lost the first three matches of the five-game series.
“The disappointing thing is that only one of those players, Mitchell Marsh, has put his hand up for selection [in Australia’s T20 World Cup side],” Taylor told the Herald and The Age. “Obviously with no [Steve] Smith, [David] Warner, [Aaron] Finch, [Marnus] Labuschagne and [Glenn] Maxwell it’s almost like an Aussie A team and what you hope with an A team is that one or two of your batsmen go 70 off 50 balls, 50 off 25 balls, and all of a sudden you’re saying ‘that’s the next guy in for us’.
“Unfortunately that hasn’t happened in the West Indies or Bangladesh. That’s the disappointing thing.”
Taylor agreed that the dearth of batting across Australian cricket was highlighted by the selectors earlier this year when they chose just three specialist Test batsmen, Smith, Warner and Labuschagne, along with two white ball specialists, Finch and Maxwell, and young all-rounder Cameron Green as part of a 17-player contract list.
“That is the biggest concern,” Taylor said. “Whether it’s the era, whether it’s the combination of the three formats of the game, COVID times, living in bubbles, but the worrying thing at the moment is that the batting depth is not there in Australian cricket.
“If you go back to the eras when we were dominant, particularly more in Test matches, we had players in Australian cricket who were belting down the door to get into the Test team.