Australia batting 'staggers' Marsh

Australia selection chief Rodney Marsh said Wednesday he was "staggered" by his side's "deplorable" first-innings batting in their Ashes series defeat by England.

Marsh insisted he and his fellow selectors had picked the best available squad but they'd been taken aback by their repeated batting failure.

England took an unbeatable 3-1 lead in the five-match series with an innings and 78-run victory in the fourth Test at Trent Bridge in Nottingham on Saturday.

It was their second successive win inside three days and saw Australia collapse to just 60 all out in 111 balls -- the shortest-ever completed first innings of any Test -- with England paceman Stuart Broad taking a remarkable eight for 15 on his Nottinghamshire home ground.

Middle-order batsmen including Australia captain Michael Clarke, Adam Voges, Shane Watson, Mitchell Marsh and Shaun Marsh managed fewer than 350 runs between them in four Tests.
"Our blokes scored more runs than their (England’s) top-order, but our middle-order scored no runs and that was the big differential – we just didn’t score any runs in the middle," Marsh, speaking to reporters in Northampton, where Australia plays a three-day tour match ahead of next week's Ashes finale at The Oval, told the cricket.com.au website.

"If you have a look at our first innings batting it's been deplorable, it's all you can say," added Marsh, one of Australia's greatest wicket-keeper/batsmen, who made his first tour of England in the drawn 1972 Ashes series.

"How the hell do you (foresee) that, how do you see some of the best batsmen in the world make no runs in the first innings of four Test matches basically.

"It just staggered me".

Marsh was adamant he and his fellow selectors had picked the best available squad.

"You’ve got to be held accountable – fine, I agree with that,” said the 67-year-old Marsh, appointed in May last year on a three-year contract to head up the four-man selection panel.

"But I’m just racking my brain to try and think of who else we could have picked...I just couldn’t think of anyone else who could have done the job."

- 'Selfish' -
This was Australia's fourth succesive Ashes series loss in England and led to renewed accusations their batsmen were 'flat-track bullies', who refused to adjust the all-out attacking approach that serves them so well at home when confronted with classic green-tinged English pitches offering seam movement and overhead conditions helping the ball swing.

Marsh said Australia's batsmen simply had to be more "selfish".    

"Batting in particular you can be quite selfish as a batsman and still be a hell of a good team person,” he explained.

"Being selfish as a batsman seems to me to be not wanting to get out and wanting to occupy the crease longer than anyone else in your team, and those things count in Test match cricket.

"I think our blokes have got to be more selfish. They’ve got to say ‘righto, no-one’s getting me out and I don’t care if it takes me all day to make a hundred.

"You’re allowed to bat all day, and I think our longest partnership in that (Trent Bridge) game was something like 18 overs. That's appalling in a Test match, I don’t care what (sort of pitch) you're playing on.”
Source: AFP