Cricket Update: Australian vice-captain Michael http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Clarke-c51120 not happy with his team’s MCG performance so far
The Australian vice-captain Michael Clarke has shown his bitterness over http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746’s poor show with the bat on the first day of the fourth Ashes Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
The hosts struggled to bat against England and ended up making only 98 runs in the first innings on the Boxing Day match. It was a sorrow sight for the home fans as they saw their home side crumble in front of some spectacular bowling by the visitors.
Clarke commented, “Our shot selection wasn’t great, no doubt. I think all of our wickets were caught behind the wicket, so there was enough in the wicket there. But we certainly have no excuses, we played some poor shots, we obviously didn’t show enough
discipline, as we’ve seen the sun coming out, dried the wicket out, it’s a really nice wicket to bat on now.”
Clarke himself managed to score just twenty runs off fifty four balls before giving an edge to the English wicketkeeper Matt Prior off James Anderson’s delivery.
Speaking on the morale of the hosts after an unimpressive outing with the bat and the ball, Clarke said, “Have a guess ... we’re all disappointed, no doubt. I think the batters especially, we knew it was going to be tough but we knew we could have done better.
Individually we’re all disappointed, and the bowlers as well, they didn’t get a wicket. We’ve got to turn that around, we’ve got to look forward to tomorrow. We know it’s going to be tough, we know it’s going to be a challenge, but we know we’re good enough.”
Clarke feels that it will be easier to bat on the MCG wicket the second time and is hopeful that his side will do much better than before. He clarified that in the first innings, the pitch had become a little difficult to play on because of the rain and
overcast conditions.
England are in a strong position after scoring a phenomenal total of 444 runs and losing just 5 wickets on the second day of the match. England’s batting was spearheaded by some brilliant batting by Jonathan Trott, who was unbeaten on 141 runs when the day's
play ended. England are probably going to put another hundred and fifty runs before giving Australia a chance to bat again.
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