BATTLE AGAINST SPIN

Sri Lanka tour a 'learning experience' for me: Henriques

by Cricbuzz Staff • Published on

Henriques failed to make use of his chances in Sri Lanka. © Cricbuzz

Moises Henriques, the Australian allrounder, was a surprise inclusion for the tour of Sri Lanka, where he struggled to make an impact across all three formats. Henriques expressed his disappointment that he couldn't make the most of the opportunities he received and also pointed out that with more time, he could have adapted different methods to adjust to the spin-friendly tracks of Sri Lanka.

"Whenever you get the opportunity to play cricket for Australia you want to do as well as you can and if I had my time again I'd prepare a little bit differently," Henriques told cricket.com.au. "I'd certainly practice my sweeping a lot further out."

The 29-year-old observed that over the years batsmen have employed the sweep shot to succeed in the subcontinent. "I feel a lot of the successful batsmen over there did a lot of sweeping and even come the one-day tour, our guys that did well like 'Wadey' (wicketkeeper-batsman Matthew Wade) and George (Bailey) did a lot of sweeping as well.

"It's definitely a shot I worked on over there but by the time I felt like I got it right, it was almost too late. It's certainly something I'd change if I had another tour there. There's nothing I can do about it now but learn from the experience and hopefully it will put me in better stead for this season," he said.

Henriques also said that he wasn't expecting the Australian selectors to recall him for the tour of Sri Lanka. "I kept those options (playing as a batsman) open as long as I was batting well enough either in the practice games or at training. You never want to rule it out.

"You don't really think about it because you don't think that your fellow teammates are going to not do well. I wasn't really expecting it because I thought our boys would go over there and play well. There were obviously a few decisions made after the second Test.

"If you asked me at the start of the series if I was expecting to bat five and play in the same team as Mitch (Marsh), I probably wouldn't have been expecting it. I'll take it and learn from it and hopefully be better from the opportunity," he reckoned.

Henriques was dismissed stumped on three occasions during the tour. The New South Welshman saw the lighter side of his dismissals and said: "I'll probably try to get some super-glue on my back toe that just kept slipping over the white line every time, even when I wasn't trying to advance down the wicket," Henriques noted with a smile. "That was quite disappointing to get out three times the same way and not learn on the run and not even realising you're making the same mistake."

© Cricbuzz

TAGS