Didn't stop the batsmen from making merry against Pak, SL and NZ however. Come on mate, a nets rule however ******** it might be suddenly cannot make elite batsmen forget their craft.
Not can playing t20s as well (after making truckloads in ODIs).
India have got very good plans and executed even better against most of them. Simple as.
No there's definitely a direction going on from the coaching staff. Look at the way that Starc batted today. That was so antithetical to the way he normally bats that it's clear grinding it out is now the goal. Langer has the batters so scared to make a mistake that they're forgetting how to construct an innings. At least that's how it appears. The batsmen are burning all of their concentration on survival that they're focussing none of it on scoring.
Problem is that grinding it out isn't working because they're letting the bowlers settle into their rhythm. They're playing subcontinental attritional cricket without realising it. There needs to be a focus on turning over the strike and turning some good balls into ones and punishing the bad balls. The bad balls aren't going to come if the batsmen never make any attempt to make something happen.
Now I'm not talking about walking down the pitch and smacking bowlers over their heads ala Matthew Hayden. I'm talking about figuring a way to safely put the ball into the gap for the occasional single. Like what the Indian batters did on day 2.
India debuted a fast bowler and are playing against finger spinners on the MCG. For how well Siraj bowled (and he did bowl well), there's no way that the glory days side would allow a newbie dictate terms like that. They'd pounce on anything and everything and hit him off his lines and lengths.
There's that story floating around of how Hayden said to Langer in one of his earlier tests that if this was the shield he'd just walk down the pitch and smack the bowler over their heads, based on the lengths they were bowling. Langer said "do it" and that was when Hayden the aggressive test opener was born. Where's the "do it" Langer now? He's focussed so much on arresting the collapses that he's forgotten to give batsmen the freedom to play their own games.
And full credit to him, he has managed to arrest the collapses. Now instead of happening in 30 balls, they happen in 150 balls. They're still collapses, they're just not as dramatic. 3-38 (14.3 overs), 7-71 (58 overs) were the two collapses in the first innings and 6-99 (47.4 overs) and 4-44 (21 overs) were the two collapses in the second innings. They're still collapses, they're still unacceptable, but now they're drawn out over two thirds of a day of cricket instead of one and a half hours.
That first innings 7-71 over 58 overs is excruciating. Not even 1.5 runs per over which means that despite batting nearly 60 overs, the last seven wickets didn't mean much. Similarly the 6-99 (47.4 overs) was half a day of cricket for the loss of over half the team and for so few runs that one Indian batsman's innings made up for it.
It has to stop. The batsmen are batting scared and there needs to be some serious soul searching before the next test. Warner is not magically going to fix all of the problems (though it will help) and Burns and Smith being out of form isn't the cause of all the problems. Even with Smith and Burns not scoring anything, Wade, Labuschagne, Head and Green are batting for long periods without really punishing the bowlers for it. We know that Wade, Head and Green are in sublime first class form and Labuschagne is a class batsman, but they get into the middle and are throwing their wickets away after grinding out a score over 100+ balls that most batsmen would consider a "start". It's not good enough.
