Oz media blames team’s collective failure for Lord’s humiliation
By chennaivision at 21 July, 2009, 6:11 pm
Melbourne, Lamenting at Australia historic defeat against England in the second Ashes Test, the media here today blamed the collective failure of the Ricky Ponting’s team for their first ever loss at the Lord’s in 75 years.
Riding on retiring star Andrew Flintoff’s five wicket haul in the second innings, England yesterday thumped the visitors by 115 runs to lead 1-0 in the five match series.
The ‘Daily Telegraph’ lashed out at the Australians saying that they were completely outplayed by the hosts at Lord’s.
”The bold rearguard action of Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin should not be allowed to mask the collectively poor performance of Australia at Lord’s. There had been some dreadful cricket leading up to this imposing stand which had seen Australia completely outplayed.
”With rare and obvious exceptions they have batted, bowled, fielded and wicket-kept so badly that the domination of the first Test in Cardiff appears more like last century than last week,” the daily said.
Despite there have been couple of umpiring blunders which were went against the Australians, the daily came down heavily on the national selectors for picking up a team which was not able to play to their potential.
”No matter how bad the umpiring was, and it was terrible, it is no excuse for the overall shoddy performance, which saw Australia trailing by 210 runs on the first innings.
”The four-man panel of chairman Andrew Hilditch, David Boon, Merv Hughes and Jamie Cox contains three opening batsmen but they failed to choose a spare opener in the 16-man squad, or a spare batsman of any sort,” it rued.
The ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ also didn’t spare the team saying that it has lost the habbit of winning and termed Ricky Ponting’s men as ‘immovable objects’.
”On the fourth evening the Australians looked like immovable objects. Now Flintoff an unstoppable force… by now the improbable had become impossible. Flintoff will play in the rest of the series and on this evidence means to go out with a bang,” Roebuck wrote in his column for the daily.
”Australia had lost the winning habit. Not once on this Ashes and Twenty20 trip has Ricky Ponting’s beleaguered party been able to sip from the cup of victory, among the sweetest libations of them all,” he added.
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