'Too many catches going down' - Healy

Ian Healy thinks Australia's high-class bowlers have masked fielding inadequacies and the team is not working enough on catching. Healy, a meticulous trainer during his 119-Test career, told the Courier-Mail the next generation faced a lot of hard training.

"They won't have the bowlers to create the chances we are getting now, so they will not be able to cruise on their talent," Healy said. "To an extent Australia has got away with it because the bowlers have created so many chances but far too many catches have gone down."

Australia's poor fielding was highlighted by seven missed chances in the third Test at Old Trafford. Healy began taking notes of dropped catches in the 2001 series and had Australia spilling as many as England - "I think it was 23 each". "It's been going on for a long time," he told the paper of the missing intensity. "I just haven't seen the repetition work going on before games for the last five years."

Under Bob Simpson fielding practice was a tight regime and the performance of the side improved markedly. The players also saw it as a chance to show off as they warmed-up for matches, or trained in places as strange as a grassy patch outside their hotel in India. On the New Zealand tour earlier this year John Buchanan spoke about time constraints cutting their catching routines.