Australian skipper Michael Clarke was candid in his assessment of his side's eight-wicket defeat against India in the Chennai Test.
The visitors were outplayed on a turning pitch where R Ashwin bagged 12 wickets and MS Dhoni scored an outstanding double hundred. Virat Kohli's fourth hundred only added to Australia's misery. However, despite all the talk of how much the pitch aided the Indian spinners, Clarke was not the one to use that as an excuse for a poor performance.
"I don't think we bowled well enough in our first innings, and we certainly didn't bat well enough in our second innings," Clarke said after the Test finished inside the first session on Day 5.
The Aussie skipper, who scored a gritty hundred in the first innings to help Australia post a healthy 380, did not believe he had missed a trick by not including a second specialist spinner in the team - India looked vulnerable at one point on Day 3 when Nathan Lyon got the ball to turn sharply off the pitch and even removed Sachin Tendulkar. But the lack of back-up for the off-spinner allowed the hosts to build on a brilliant partnership between Dhoni and Kohli, a stand that took the game away from the Aussies.
"It's not just about selection. It's about how you perform." said Clarke.
"There were areas in the Indian team we didn't attack enough," explained Clarke, adding, "If we'd got 150 or 200 on the board (in the second innings), we might have been able to expose, or at least see how they played on a deteriorating wicket."
Clarke was gracious enough to accept that India were the better team, saying the hosts played outstanding cricket and they deserved the victory.
"A lot of credit has to go to India," said Clarke.
Besides the skipper himself and debutante Moises Henriques, who scored 68 and 81 not out, the other batsmen failed and that did seem to bother Clarke but he was still not convinced about a change in the batting order.
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