The coach of domestic Australian side Victoria has blamed bowler-friendly first-class pitches and the ever-increasing short forms of the game as the reasons behind Australia's Test batting frailty as seen in the Ashes.
According to the Courier Mail, the top seven Australian players are taking heavy criticism due to their dismal performance, especially at the Lord's Test, although Usman Khawaja and Michael Clarke have been saved from the worst of the criticism after their battling half centuries.
Stating that all parties in Australian cricket had to work together to be 'part of the solution', Greg Shipperd said that the quality of pitches across Australia have been too heavily bent towards the bowlers, adding that it is necessary to draw that fact back quite significantly.
According to the Bushrangers and Melbourne Stars mentor, changing the pitches will make the bowlers work harder for their wickets and batsmen to understand and accept that batting for long periods of time is the key at Test match level, although he added that short-game driven 'batting generation of the future' faced a challenge to adapt to cricket's longer forms.
Shipperd also said that two-and-a-half day games are not needed by Australian cricket, adding that to provide results, the team needed to play good cricket and have good captaincy and strategic declarations if they cannot bowl sides out.
