“Perfect! This is where we want to be now, back against the wall...” Mitchell Marsh told his teammates as they walked back to the dressing room, following an 89-run defeat against New Zealand in a T20 World Cup fixture on Saturday.
While that led to a bit of laughter among the players, they also realised that now it needs to win all its games and improve the net run rate in a bid to defend its title.
That’s going to be a daunting task, but the Australian camp is up for the challenge.
Adam Zampa, while revealing the Marsh incident, admitted that even though it is not ideal to start the campaign with a defeat, the team will work on the weak links before playing Sri Lanka in the next game.
“Losing the first game is obviously not ideal. With this margin, it is even less ideal. We have (to win) four games to make the semis hopefully and it will need six to win the World Cup,” Zampa told reporters at the mixed media zone.
Even the team’s coach Andrew McDonald echoed similar sentiments.
“First and foremost, we will not try to look too far ahead,” McDonald said, making it clear that the team will take one game and a time.
“For now, the idea is to return to winning ways against Sri Lanka in Perth next week and then look at improving the net run rate. Sri Lanka is our next task, win that, then move on to England, win that. Then move on, and move step by step,” the coach said.
While the team wants to go back to the drawing board and analyse what went wrong in Sydney, captain Aaron Finch admits that in T20s, momentum is the key.
“It can be brutal at times. To be able to not look that far ahead is important because you can't win the tournament if you don't win the next game or the next contest if you don't prepare well,” Finch said.
And to do that, there are quite a few things that need to be addressed.
“There’s a lot of big things that can distract you if you allow them. So the fact that we've lost one game, yes, it's a heavy loss and it hurts our chances, no doubt. But we can't dwell on that. We can't change it,” Finch said, “All we can do is concentrate on the next game and prepare really well for that against Sri Lanka and see how we go…”
And going by the captain’s words, the team needs ‘to be ultra-positive, ultra aggressive’ in a bid to turn things around. Playing at home with expectations skyrocketing is not always the best place to be in. Aussies have realised it. That too, after the very first game!
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