Australia’s current ODI batting woes ominously linked to looming Ashes campaign

THE spread of Australia’s batting collapse pandemic to the one-day team should have alarm bells ringing about the potential for an Ashes disaster.

Steve Smith can only watch on as teammates fall around him.

THE spread of Australia’s batting collapse pandemic to the one-day team should have alarm bells ringing about the potential for an Ashes disaster.

Stand-alone one-day series come and go without anybody noticing on the proviso that you don’t completely crash and burn. Unless Australia can turn fortunes around in India on Sunday, they are staring down the barrel of a morale-crushing scenario already 2-0 down to Virat Kohli and co.

When the sky fell in on Australian cricket last summer and Rod Marsh and five players perished after Hobart, the seeds for that historic low point were sewn the month before in South Africa, when the ODI side was whitewashed 5-0.

Steve Smith can only watch on as teammates fall around him.

Test cricket, especially the Ashes, might be a different kettle of fish to largely irrelevant 50-over matches on the subcontinent, but Steve Smith and his side know from experience that when the rot sets in it can transcend formats.

The fact Pat Cummins (withdrawn from the T20 series to follow the ODIs in India to rest), Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, James Pattinson and Nathan Coulter-Nile are all on track to start the Ashes summer fully fit puts Australia in a powerful position to bombard England into submission.

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However, the susceptibility of Australia’s batsmen to crippling collapses on a regular basis has ensured that advantage is not as profound as what it should be.

Australia has undoubtedly grown as a Test outfit since the desolation in Hobart, but still, all things considered, they’ve won just one of their past five series.

They are the World Cup champions, and admittedly still two years out from their title defence, but as it stands Australia have gone backwards in one-day cricket and have failed to regenerate the team following the exits of Michael Clarke, Shane Watson, Mitchell Johnson and Brad Haddin.

Travis Head and Marcus Stoinis are arguably the only new players to have made a solid fist of their opportunities of the many blooded since that 2015 World Cup and of the experienced campaigners left over from that tournament only Smith and David Warner have sustained consistent top form.

Hilton Cartwright’s unsuccessful start as an opener is the latest in a long line of ODI experiments that so far, haven’t come off and Australia has now lost 10 on the trot away from home.

The floundering state of the ODI outfit is a secondary issue to this Ashes summer, but in a way they are ominously linked.

Momentum and confidence matters in cricket, especially leading into big series, and when Australia famously destroyed England 5-0 in the 2013-14 Ashes, it had come on the back of a huge one-day performance against India.

Warner watches as Ajinka Rahane dismisses him.

Last summer it went the other way and when all control was lost in the one-dayers in South Africa, they never got it back.

Smith spoke frankly after the Bangladesh Test series about the enormous mental problem his fellow batsmen faced in ending a vulnerability to collapses which has now spanned years.

After watching his side capitulate around him to be bowled out for just 202 and lose by 50 runs to India on Thursday despite earlier putting the hosts on the ropes thanks to another superb bowling performance from Coulter-Nile — Smith was forced to admit the batting issues are even more serious than first thought.

“It’s happening a bit too often for my liking, to be honest with you, in all forms of cricket,” he said.

The Hilton Cartwright experiment is well and truly over.

“We’ve had a lot of collapses and we need to stop.

“It’s easy to just sit here and say ‘it needs to stop’, but when you get out in the middle you have to change what you’re doing because it’s not working.

“Watching the ball closer or maybe the guys are trying to watch it too closely and forgetting about just playing the game.

“It’s a hard one to put my finger on. But whatever it is, it needs to change and we need to make better decisions when we’re under pressure and start playing the game properly.

“Because we’re having too many collapses and it’s not good enough.”