Dubai: Australia coach Darren Lehmann hailed the Dubai International Stadium wicket, despite his team losing by 221 runs to Pakistan in the first Test there.
Lehmann placed the blame for the defeat squarely on his batsmen’s inability to adapt to the conditions.
“This is a very good cricket wicket and we didn’t adapt well enough and didn’t play well enough,” he said.
“We didn’t play the way we needed to play in those conditions, didn’t adjust well enough. You have got to get through the first 20 or 30 balls and then you will be okay. They should understand that a lot of the wickets are going to have no spin, so maybe we are trying to play for things that aren’t there.”
Elaborating on the type of deliveries that got his batsmen out, Lehmann said: “When you are talking about learning how to play in these conditions, we got beaten on the other side — with less spin. You would think it would spin more. We got beaten with straight balls, I think five or six dismissals throughout the game.
“We have to get better at hitting the straight ball, watching the ball for a start, but they are things the guys will work on. The wickets are certainly different than those wickets I saw in 2013, they are better wickets here.”
Lehmann is on a search to find out ways to produce big scores in the subcontinent.
“We were disappointing with the bat. We have to find a way to get through that and make big scores. One of the things we haven’t done on the subcontinent is make big scores. We need to start piling it on. We should have made 500 on that wicket.
“I think we were a little bit timid at stages and we’ve got to be a little bit more aggressive, I would think. We want to be quite positive where we possibly can, but at the end of the day we didn’t get to the stage of being positive because we lost our wickets very quickly in clumps.
“To be a very good cricket side we have to firstly get out of those situations which we didn’t do, and secondly learn from the conditions and adapt from Brisbane to Dubai or Delhi.”
Lehmann picked out top order batsman Steve Smith for special praise.
“We have to get players who can adapt to different conditions and I think Steve Smith has been excellent for wherever he is playing,” he said.
