Hussey and Vaughan mount fresh concerns on Australia's dodgy batting amid ODI series defeat

Australia's young batting brigade has come under immense fire as the home side suffered an unimaginable series defeat against the Men in Green for the first time in the ODI format since 2002. Some fiery exhibition of fast bowling from Haris Rauf, Shaheen Afridi, and Naseem Shah reduced the all-might Aussie batting lineup to rubbles as Australia were bowled out for less than 180 in the remaining two ODIs. The obvious reason for their swift downfall can be pointed out to their paltry batting which led to their undoing in the series.

The Australia batting department experienced some new lows in that series. This 1-2 series defeat also marks the first instance where none of the Aussie batters failed to register a fifty or fifty-plus score. 

Hussey dissects the underlying reason behind Australia's catastrophic batting failure

Former Australia cricketer and sports commentator Michael Hussey commented on air about the players' inclination towards playing an aggressive brand of T20 cricket. He highlighted that the heavy-risk brand of cricket has infiltrated the Aussie batting lineup. Due to the high proliferation of franchise cricket, their batters have now become more susceptible to getting out in a rash manner. 

“Playing a lot of T20 cricket and seeing what’s happening around the world, batters these days are going really hard – playing high-risk games. When it comes off, it looks great and it’s exciting for everyone to watch. But when it doesn’t in the face of high-quality bowling, you can get exposed.”

It has been a go-to strategy, especially for the likes of Josh Inglis and Jake Fraser-McGurk to go all out from ball number one in the recently concluded three-match series. This strategy can do wonders on some days while on other days, it can backfire. The 49-year-old urges the youngsters to adopt a slightly different approach to 50-over cricket and shift their focus on converting small starts into big scores. 

“You’ve got a bit of time, you can build that innings … turn that 20-30 into a 50-60 and then hopefully an 80-100, but that’s part of the development. 50 overs is sort of that in-between game … you do have a bit more time.” 

Michael Vaughan shell-shocked after witnessing Australia's horror show with the bat

Former England captain Michael Vaughan shared the same concerns as his counterpart Hussey and admitted that he had never ever seen the Aussie batting lineup crumble against such a high-quality seam attack. Vaughan felt that the potent Pakistan pace attack troubled the batters with swing and pace, although not being express pace, to lose all 20 wickets under 200 in both games was simply unthinkable by his standards. 

“Let’s be honest, for three games I don’t remember seeing an Australian batting lineup look so exposed.” Three games on the trot against a bit of pace, a bit of movement – it’s not express, it’s not rapid. But they’ve been completely exposed.”

Following the conclusion of a highly entertaining ODI series, the focus now moves to the T20I series that will commence on November 14 at the Gabba. Some big names from the Australian camp will be missing as the likes of Cummins, Starc, and Hazlewood are all but away to prepare for the upcoming Border Gavaskar Trophy that will start on November 22. 

See also: Australian squad announced for Perth Test with two potential Test debutants