London: After facing a 135-run defeat at the hands of England in the final Ashes Test and equalling the series on 2-2 draw, Australia head coach Justin Langer on Monday termed the side as a 'good team which is maturing'.
"We are a good team, we are a maturing team. We have got some great players on it. But we're aspiring to be a great cricket team. You got to work hard and get consistent results to achieve that. That comes from experience and learning how to win. That comes with players individually getting more experienced and the team working together," ESPNcricinfo quoted Langer as saying.
In the five-match Ashes series, Australia won the first and the fourth Test while England managed to win the third and the fifth Test. The second match ended in a draw.
In the middle order, apart from Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne nobody scored runs and were dismissed cheaply in the whole series.
Smith went past his own record of scoring 769 runs against India during the 2014-15 season to become the highest run-scorer in the series of this century as he had a total of 774 runs in the series.
"Those sort of things evolve I think. I think back to the start of my career, in 1993, we had some senior players but we didn't necessarily win all the time. And that we learned to do through Steve Waugh's era. We learned to be ruthless but we also had seven or eight great players and a number of very good players and a couple of good ones like me. But that takes time to develop and evolve," he added.
Pacer Pat Cummins became the highest wicket-taker in the series as he scalped 29 wickets. The Australian bowlers did their job well but the team lacked in the batting department as their opener failed to provide the solid foundation it needed in the series. David Warner and Marcus Harris struggled to middle the ball.
"With this exciting fast-bowling group we've got, if we start batting well we'll win a lot of games of cricket. We go to Australia to play two pink-ball Test matches, against two good sides in Pakistan and New Zealand, two day-night Test matches will be exciting," Langer said.
"There's a real challenge for young Australian batters, the ones who want to step up and score lots of runs and work hard on their footwork patterns and techniques and ability to score runs, it's a pretty exciting time. That's a big challenge," he added.
