Top four need to stand up and take control: Smith

Steven Smith harped on the need for consistency following Australia’s 1-4 loss in the One-Day International series against India on Sunday (October 1). Although Australia arrested its 11-match streak of losses away from home with a 21-run victory in Bangalore in the fourth game, its underlying problem – lack of batting consistency – was highlighted throughout the series.

"We showed some glimpses throughout the series that we could play, but we've been losing wickets in clumps very consistently and that's not good enough," said the Australian captain after the seven-wicket loss in Nagpur. "The top four need to stand up and really take control. We did that in a couple of games, last game in Bangalore to be particular. But we are not doing it consistently enough. We are not giving ourselves the chance to really go hard at the back end of the game and getting partnerships in the middle, something we need to look at."

As has been the case in the last three games, Australia began positively, putting on a half-century opening stand after opting to bat at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium. Following Aaron Finch’s dismissal in the 12th over, there was an implosion of sorts as Australia slipped to 118 for 4 by the 25th over. India’s sharp fielding in the ring added to the pressure as their batsmen struggled to even rotate strike. Smith put it down to “lack of adaption” from the batsmen who failed to convert their starts.

“Virat (Kohli) set some really good fields and stopped us from hitting and I don’t think we adapted well enough,” he said. “Today was probably a day when we could have used softer hands, played a bit square and hit the ball into the gaps instead of actually hitting down the ground.”

Australia has had its moments throughout the series. It had reduced India to 87 for 5 in Chennai before falling to a 26-run defeat. Then it restricted the home side to a sub-par 252 in Kolkata before its batsmen failed to fire in a 50-run loss. In Indore, it was 224 for 1 with more than 12 overs remaining, before a late implosion and a clinical Indian batting display secured the series.

"We’ve addressed the issue of losing wickets in a heap several times," conceded Smith. "We are just not taking our words out in the middle and delivering with our actions, unfortunately. We have glimpses of it, play well in periods and then we just get ourselves in trouble, probably from poor decision-making or under pressure maybe. That's what we might have to put it down to, worst of all. It's just not good enough."

Both Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood missed the tour due to injury, but Australia otherwise fielded a full-strength side for the series. The pace duo was replaced by Nathan Coulter-Nile, Pat Cummins and Kane Richardson, who fared decently, but it is the batting that remains a significant concern.

Smith admitted that due to the string of losses away from home, the players on this tour are likely to face stiff competition from those performing well in the domestic one-day tournament back home.

"Guys are back home playing the domestic one-day domestic competition at the moment and some of them can put some pressure on the guys that are here," he said. "Obviously, the results haven't been good enough and we want our guys to perform consistently. We will have a good look at the one-day competition back home and hopefully a few guys can jump out of the pack and score big runs and bowl really well as well."

Smith himself hasn't had a great series by his own high standards. He scored two half-centuries after a failure in in the opening ODI in Chennai. But with scores of 3 and 16 in the last two games, Smith ended the series with 142 runs at 28.62. "I wasn't feeling great at the start of the series, but I'm feeling okay now,” he conceded. “I had a few issues that I was working on but I guess I slowly found out a nice tempo which I'm after. I would have loved to score a lot more runs. Having not been able to get those runs like I have been in the past few occasions ... from that aspect, as a leader of the team, it has been disappointing. But I guess that's cricket, you have those periods when you're not playing or getting the scores that you like.”