We failed the India examination: McDonald

NEW DELHI: Australia chief coach Andrew McDonald made no bones about his team’s capitulation in the second innings of the second Test here, saying that it “failed the examination” of India.

Australia, which seemed to be shaping up well for the challenge with 61 for one on the board at stumps on Day Two, lost nine second-innings wickets for just 48 runs to be all-out for 113. India then reached the winning target of 115 for the loss of four wickets to take a 2-0 lead and retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

“Our methods are going to be critiqued, and rightfully so,” McDonald was quoted as saying by Australian Associated Press on Monday. “At the end of Day Two, if you said that our preparation was good, you would probably have a different slant on it, but within an hour [on the third day], people start to critique what happened in the past. And [on] Day Three, we failed under the examination of India,” added McDonald.

The coach maintained that the preparatory camp on turning tracks in Bengaluru had provided adequate preparation for the spin test. “I still would not have changed what we did leading in, there is no doubt about that. I think that they (the squad) had really good preparation in Bangalore, so there are not any excuses.”

The 41-year-old McDonald also said that some players diverted from their time-tested game plan, which resulted in the second humiliating defeat of the series.

“There were some people who went clearly away from the game plan that made them successful over a period of time and that is for us to own as a collective. We have got to be better than that, that is the bottom line, we have got to own it and we are not here to shy away from the fact that we were not good enough,” said McDonald.