“The same people in that dressing room are the same people who will be in Adelaide,” McDonald said after one of Australia’s worst home performances in recent memory.
Asked if Marsh had recovered well after bowling 17 overs in three days, the most he had achieved in a game in three years after bowling just four overs in all of cricket over the past eight months, McDonald was cautious. “We’ll wait and see,” he said.
The coach did not think Australia had fallen short of bowling options in Perth, due to Marsh’s fitness, despite taking just 16 wickets on a surface where India managed to take 20 easily while restricting Australia to just 104 and 238. .
“No, we don’t feel that [was a weakness]”McDonald said. “We knew that Mitch [Marsh] “It was a little bit below par, but I thought the performance in the first innings was satisfactory.”
The coach was further pressed about whether the same XI would appear in Adelaide and whether Inglis could be considered to replace a specialist batsman.
“We’ll evaluate it as we go, but like I said, the team that’s there will be in Adelaide,” he said.
“That’s an ongoing discussion and it has ups and downs in players’ careers, so right now he’s in one of those moments and will certainly be criticized externally,” McDonald said. “But internally we are very confident that, at his best, he is the player we need.”
Beyond that, there aren’t many batsmen in Shield cricket who are posting huge numbers to justify Test selection, partly due to the difficulty of domestic pitches. But McDonald was confident the talent would be there if needed.
“I think there have been enough players knocking on the door,” he said. “I feel like we have some depth if we need to. I think sometimes people look at the pure numbers of what happens in Shield cricket, but sometimes it’s hard to make a connection with the surfaces they sometimes play on. So “We feel like we have a lot of players available if needed.”
McDonald added that a review of Perth’s performance would focus on whether Australia’s failures with both bat and ball were due to poor planning or poor execution.
“It’s always a combination,” McDonald said. “We felt like our planning was where we needed it to be. Execution in the midst of that is always an issue. We were comfortable with the plans. Clearly, the approach with the hitters and the way they’ve been challenged always goes well. “It’s going to be a learning in the future. “So we have some challenges, there’s no doubt about that.”
Alex Malcolm is associate editor of ESPNcricinfo
