“Unfortunately they didn’t come to the party”
Image courtesy of: Zimbio
Australia captain Steven Smith has revealed that West Indies skipper Jason Holder turned down his offer of a last-day run chase during the rain-affected third Test in Sydney.
Smith told Holder that Australia would declare on 0/0 in their first innings and allow the tourists to build a 370-run lead, upon where they would declare and give Australia 70 overs to chase down the target.
However, Holder rejected the proposal and the match ended up finishing as a draw, which led to the Baggy Greens winning the Test series 2-0 instead of the 3-0 whitewash they were targeting.
“There was an approach,” Smith said. “Unfortunately they didn’t come to the party, I offered him [Holder] 370 runs in 70 overs, which I thought was pretty generous.
“It would take some good batting to get that on a day five SCG wicket but they weren’t up for the challenge unfortunately.
“They would have had to declare this morning, I would have declared 0-0 and then bowled lob-ups for seven or eight overs or whatever it was, 370 off 70. I offered but they weren’t willing to take it.
“We want to try and win every game we play and today was a perfect opportunity to set the game up for a good chase and for the fans who stayed out this afternoon.”
Smith confirmed that he checked with head coach Darren Lehmann whether the plan he had formulated was within the rules.
“Yeah, I spoke to Boof [Lehmann] who read through the rules and said you are allowed to do that kind of thing,” he said. “That was on our cards today and unfortunately they didn’t come to the party.
“We can’t control the weather. It’s been a disappointing week here in Sydney. It would have been nice to have got a bit more play in, but we can’t control that. We did everything we could this week.”
Holder confirmed that Smith had approached him, but said that he was not keen on taking him up on his offer.
“He came to us and made an offer, I just went back to the team and we thought at this stage of our development it wasn’t the best thing for us,” Holder said. “We had Denesh Ramdin who was scoring well and looking well, so we just gave him the encouragement to go out there and build an innings and build some confidence.
“We set out at the beginning of the series to bat 90 overs each time we batted and get past the 300-mark.
“That was one of the things that we wanted to achieve today and we achieved that.”