Konstas cobbled a mere 50 runs in six innings at an average of 8.33 in the Caribbean.<\/a> It was the slimmest aggregate for an Australian opener in more than 40 years across a series of three Tests or more.<\/p>\nUpon Konstas\u2019 return to the indoor nets, the addition of the trigger movement was geared at making him a little more dynamic at the crease, after his static appearances previously.<\/p>\n
Against bowlers of high pace in particular, a pre-ball movement can give a batter more of a chance to play effectively in both attack and defence. For Konstas, it should also allow him to cope more comfortably with balls moving in at him seeking stumps and pads \u2013 the common area targeted by international opponents thus far.<\/p>\n
Australian head coach Andrew McDonald alluded to \u201cnew movement patterns\u201d in discussing Konstas\u2019 century in Lucknow on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAny time that you get space and time to work on your game and then to be able to execute that straight away with a century in an intra-squad [match] \u2026 and then an Australia-A contest in foreign conditions [gets you] that immediate feedback [that] what you\u2019ve been working on can work,\u201d McDonald told SEN.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo come from the West Indies, to go away, work on your game [and have] that winter investment, [and] get [an] immediate return, I think gives a lot of confidence. A lot of our game is about confidence and believing in what you\u2019re doing. Now it\u2019s the ability to sustain that.<\/p>\n
\u201cOppositions will look at it, critique it, they\u2019ll work out ways to potentially pick holes in some potential new movement patterns that are there. There\u2019s debate around whether exposing young batters too early potentially can damage across a journey. I think match experience gives you great learning space and the ability to go from game to game against quality opponents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Konstas made his century for Australia A in the company of young Victorian opener Campbell Kellaway, who made his own mark with a fluent 88 in conditions that aided seam bowlers early on before flattening out.<\/p>\n
\u201c[I\u2019m] very happy \u2013 it\u2019s good spending time in the middle,\u201d Konstas said after his hundred. \u201cI had to face quite a few demons, mentally, just trying to get through that \u2013 just different challenges and trying to adapt to the conditions. [I\u2019m] super stoked and hopefully I can build on from that.<\/p>\n
\u201cEarly on it had a bit of nip and just trying to get through that, and then spin-wise it didn\u2019t spin as much, so [I was] just backing my instincts and trying to repeat each ball with my process.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Lucknow, Australia A capitalised on Konstas\u2019 century to rattle to 6-532 declared on day two, with wicketkeeper Josh Phillipe cracking an unbeaten 123 from just 87 balls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Konstas\u2019 small shimmy is the fruit of plenty of indoor sessions at home in Sydney with his personal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-149131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}