Australia's coach Nielsen wants new Twenty20 approach

Australia's coach Tim Nielsen has conceded his team needs to revisit its approach to Twenty20 to avoid being bundled out of the next ICC World Twenty20. It is less than a year until the next tournament, in the West Indies, and Nielsen wants individual players to consider "where they're at" so the selectors can prepare a competitive squad.

"We have to start approaching it differently when we play the Twenty20 stuff in our normal calendar, because we've seen those as one-off games and it's difficult to get guys across overseas, or it's maybe been seen as a chance for blokes to have an extra day's rest here and there," Nielsen told the Age. "We might have to revisit that. The players will have to think about where they're at with it, and where we go from here."

One of Australia's problems is the lack of Twenty20s that their stars play. The domestic competition takes place while the Test and ODI season is in full swing, so fringe internationals have more opportunity to take part than men like Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey.

National teams are restricted to three Twenty20 internationals per season, except for the ICC World Twenty20, and Australia have treated those games as a chance for the busiest players to rest. But that contributed to the Australians' early exit this year and Nielsen has spent the past few days analysing the disappointing result.

"I didn't have much sleep last night, tossing and turning about what we could have done better," Nielsen said. "I felt like we were in a pretty good place going into the tournament, and that's what is so disappointing about it.

"We came here thinking we had a nicely balanced squad, and I think we showed in the practice games that when they're playing at their best they can play any form of the game. We need to look at why things didn't work well, and we need to be honest with ourselves."
Source: www.cricinfo.com