Darren Lehmann has been credited with turning around the plummeting fortunes of Australia. He has inspired the Aussies to Ashes triumph and Test series victory over South Africa besides wins in the limited-overs cricket against both the nations.
The two back-to-back defeats, which have brought Australia on the brink of elimination, forced the former left-hander to remark that his wards need to improve match awareness in T20 format.
Excerpts:
On areas to work on: We beat ourselves in these two games. Obviously, credit to the West Indies and Pakistan but we should’ve won both of these games. We’ve got only ourselves to blame. I think we under-clubbed with the bat in both games to be perfectly honest. I think we needed 75 off 10 in the first game with eight wickets in hand. And our match awareness has got to improve in this format. And again today we got 178 and we didn’t bat very well. Our top six have got to shoulder that.
On James Faulkner’s comments waking up the giants: They’re big players, so they are giants. From my point of view James has probably got to choose his words a little bit better but that’s just part and parcel of the banter of the game, isn’t it? We’re in the entertainment business and if I could dance like Chris Gayle, I’d be dancing every night of the week. We play our cricket hard and verbally that’s what is going to happen. But we play it fair. That’s just part and parcel. You live and die by the sword don’t you? You win, you lose, you’ve just got to cop it and move on.
On celebrations by West Indies: At the end of the day you’re going to get emotional with winning. We’ve certainly been through those stages but we’re really respectful of that as well. When you win you’ve got to win in the right way and act appropriately. If that’s the way they do that, that’s fine. That’s not our choice. That’s certainly not what we do. They certainly dance very well though, I’ll give them that.
On challenge against India spinners: We’re lucky enough that we’ve played some decent one-day cricket against India, in India, not too long ago in October. So we know them very well, and they know us very well. It’s going to be a great challenge for our batters and bowlers to put a complete performance together. If we do that we can compete with anyone in the world.