Former Australian bowler Trent Copeland is urging Pat Cummins’ men to work with their best limited-overs batters ahead of the Ashes in a bid to plan funky fields for Bazball
- Copeland said Australia should learn the lessons of Stokes’ Headingley heist
- He said Cummins’ men needed bespoke training ahead of the Ashes series
- The former Northamptonshire seamer has donned the famous baggy green cap three times
Australia have been encouraged to summon their toughest and limited batters to their pre-Ashes training camp to plan funky fields for Bazball.
Trent Copeland, the ex-Northamptonshire seamer who wore the famous baggy green cap three times in a career that ended two months ago, believes his countrymen need bespoke training ahead of the five-match series will start against England next month, citing a failure to contain. Ben Stokes’s remarkable steal of Headingley four years ago in his argument.
‘Personally, I think they should have some sessions where they get guys like Chris Lynn, Matty Short coming back from the IPL, whoever is there as batters for the Hundred, for the red-ball sessions against at our best quickly and just start taking them,’ Copeland said on Twitter.
‘It’s not “hey boys, slog it out of the park.” But try to score runs as fast as you can by doing what you do because to me, the field is not going to be your traditional four slips, gully, close mid-off and mid-on.
‘And what we lost in the Headingley match was that the field needed wasn’t just deep point – it needed to be like 10 off (the boundary), just behind the square for the skewed shot on the sight screen going out side and flying to the backward point.
Trent Copeland says Pat Cummins’ Australia need bespoke training ahead of Ashes series
‘If they hit it in the middle, it goes to you in England, so it’s an interesting one where I think our preparation – maybe just for the bowlers – has to have some guys taking them on. and thinking: ok, where are the fielders… when someone shows us that Plan A won’t work.’
In the dozen Test matches of Stokes’ captaincy, England have put the onus on the attack with the bat, scoring at a rate of 4.73 runs per over, which equates to a total of 425 runs per full day’s play – a whopping 140 more than average. of all teams this century and 167 more than the average in Test history.
