T20 World Cup: John Buchanan reveals how Australia prepares for cricket’s minnows

Being a strong cricketing nation Australia rarely faces the sport’s minnows yet, this World Cup is different. DANIEL CHERNY talks to the coach of the nation’s golden era John Buchanan about how he best prepared for the matches.

Try as he might, John Buchanan can’t remember anything about the time Australia played the US in a full international.

Probably fair enough too, given the one-day international at Southampton - part of the 2004 Champions Trophy - was over within two and three-quarter hours as Australia gulped down a chase of 66 inside eight overs.

Such is the nature of cricket’s largely closed-shop schedule and Australia’s historic indifference towards the sport’s weaklings that seldom do the Aussie men face an associate nation.

The contraction of the one-day World Cup and the presence of what had effectively been a qualifying tournament for the T20 equivalent until this year meant that Australia’s opponents, even at global events, rarely get much more exotic than Afghanistan or Ireland, and even meetings with those sides are few and far between, with scheduled series against both nations for later this year shelved for political and financial reasons respectively.

But a fresh format for this month’s T20 World Cup in the Caribbean and US means that in the space of 11 days, the Aussies have games against Oman (ranked 19), Namibia (13) and Scotland (14).

Australia is unbeaten in internationals against non-Test playing nations since losing to Zimbabwe at the 1983 World Cup in what remains the Aussies’ sole defeat to an ICC associate.

John Buchanan (left) was Australia’s coach from 1999 to 2007.

How then does cricket’s most successful nation prepare for the occasional game against opposition which by all measures it should be beating 99 times out of 100?

Buchanan, coach of the golden generation Australian side from 1999 to 2007, was at the helm for only a handful of meetings with non-Test sides, including a smattering against Kenya who famously made a run to the 2003 World Cup semi-finals.

At that tournament, Australia had a heavily front-ended schedule, notching early wins against fellow title aspirants Pakistan and India.

That shaped the attitude for later group matches against qualifiers Netherlands and Namibia, about whom Buchanan concedes there was “very little” intelligence.

“By the time we fronted the associate countries we were in a position where we were able to play Jimmy Maher as a keeper. Andy Bichel hadn’t played much, so he got a little bit of a run there, which was fortuitous because obviously he and (Michael) Bevan were instrumental in our games in Port Elizabeth,” Buchanan told this masthead.

Four years later, the format had been amended to include 16 teams grouped into four lots of four. The Aussies had endured a shaky lead-in after being beaten by England in the tri-series finals and whitewashed by New Zealand after taking a weakened side across the Tasman.

With a pair of associates - Scotland and the Ducth - to start the World Cup, Buchanan recalls a narrower focus.

How will Australia's current coach Andrew Mcdonald prepare his troops for this world cup? Picture: AFP

“(It was a) little bit different to what we decided to do in 2003. We were not going to take our foot off the pedal against any side. So in other words, we wanted to play our best cricket with our best side every time we walked onto the field.”

Naturally this type of attitude has spawned some frightful hidings. Take a look at the lists of Australia’s heaviest one-day wins by both runs scored and balls remaining and associates feature prominently, including a 309-run win against the Netherlands in Delhi last October.

Sometimes there are extra incentives to win comprehensively like net run rate or the need to dodge adverse weather. However Buchanan says for the greats of the game it can also be necessary to provide artificial goals.

“It is often more difficult for a level of player that is not necessarily being challenged by the opposition, not being consistently challenged through the course we’re going by their opposition,” Buchanan says.

“In a sense, it’s no different to training a lot of times and that is no reflection on the (other) teams. But in a training sense, it’s very much upon the individuals to create situations that are important for them to actually prepare themselves to go and play. So in a sense, they’re skilled at doing that.”

How will Australia go this world cup? Picture: Getty Images

After wiping the floor with the US two decades ago, then-Aussie skipper Ricky Ponting questioned whether such lopsided games were doing more harm than good.

It is a balance with which Buchanan still grapples.

“There’s two competing forces there. One is you’re trying to develop the game. And obviously, from an ICC perspective, the more countries that they have playing or exposed to cricket, in theory that’s a good for the whole development of the game. Up until the point that you get on the field, and then it is a complete mismatch. And you can get the reverse outcome that you want insofar as people say, ‘well, it’s a waste of time playing these things for both teams: It doesn’t do their development any good. And secondly, it doesn’t necessarily challenge the teams that are sitting well above them.’

“So I think it’s always competing forces. But in the end, what probably helps keep driving it, it’s going to be revenues, it’s going to broadcast. It’s going to be probably the politics that sit in behind it, you know, with countries having votes here and there. All those sorts of all those factors, I think, play part and parcel of why these teams, the associate countries find their place in various tournaments. Obviously, the T20 cricket even though some teams probably will get obliterated, it narrows the gap. All they need is one upset, and that justifies the additions.”