Australia skipper Steve Smith has called on his side's batters to learn from their mistakes in the recently concluded Test series against Bangladesh and avoid batting collapses in the upcoming Ashes series against England.
After Australia saved face with a series-levelling second Test victory over Bangladesh on Thursday in Chittagong, Smith admitted that batting collapses were one of the main concerns of his team.
Australia have had about 15 batting collapses in their last 14 games.
While David Warner (123), Peter Handscomb (82) and Smith (58) made noticeable contributions in the first innings of the Chittagong Test, there was yet another batting collapse of 7-79 which prompted the skipper to raise concerns.
"I still think have a lot of improvement in us. We probably let ourselves down at times throughout this Test match," cricket.com.au quoted Smith as saying the seven-wicket victory in the second Test.
"I thought our first-innings bowling was very good to restrict them. Our first-innings batting, obviously the partnership between 'Petey' (Handscomb) and 'Davey' (Warner) was fantastic. And then we got ourselves into one of our collapses that we've had."
"I think we've had 15 collapses in our last 14 games, our analyst told me yesterday. That's not good enough for an Australian cricket team. That's something we really need to work on. We need to rectify that come the next series and the Ashes," he added.
The right-handed batsman, however, acknowledged that this problem with the batsmen is less technical than it is mental.
"I'd say that probably 95 per cent of batting is mental and decision-making. I think unfortunately we've probably been making the wrong decisions and getting ourselves in some trouble. It's something that we need to work on," said Smith.
"I don't think it's technical a lot of the time. Guys just have to make better decisions consistently and hopefully be able to build some partnerships in the middle. We've got off to some pretty good starts quite a lot of time and then the collapse starts," he added.
England, who hold the Ashes, travel to Australia for a five-match Ashes series that begins in November.
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