With his bowlers being crushed under a majestic unbeaten 294-run stand between Cheteshwar Pujara and Murali Vijay, Australian coach, Mickey Arthur, fronted up to face the tough questions from the media at the end of day-two of the Hyderabad Test.

When asked whether it’s the batsmen – for the first-innings total of 239 for 9 – or the bowlers who were responsible for Australia’s miserable situation, Arthur said he’d divide the blame equally.

“I think it’s a bit of both, the bowlers worked really tirelessly today. They had a good first session, the second session they started to dominate and if you have two in batters at tea time, they are going to hurt you, which they both did. Both of them were outstanding today. I do think we should have got more in our first innings without a doubt and again we tried and toiled today without much success.”

Australia made a few bold changes to their playing XI going into this Test after the eight-wicket defeat in Chennai. They left Nathan Lyon out in favour of Xavier Doherty and handed Glenn Maxwell his Test debut. Arthur said, off-spinner Lyon needed a break after being taken to the cleaners by the Indian batsmen in the first Test.

“We wanted primarily a left-arm spinner. We looked at Chennai, we thought the Indian middle order played the offspin particularly well. We wanted somebody who could turn it away as our primary resource, which gave Xavier an opportunity.

“I thought he went very well today, he toiled manfully, he went about three an over which was pretty decent. Xavier gave us what we know Xavier can,” the coach said about the left-arm spinner.

“Glenn (Maxwell) was always going to be the other option, we felt that we would have another spinner and if we had another spinner, we wanted a guy who would bring more to the party. He was another allrounder, a guy that could bat eight and bat deep for us and give us something in the field. That’s the way we want with Maxi primarily as the second spinner.

“As for Nathan, we just think it was the right time after Chennai to give him a little bit of a break. He had a couple of technical things that we wanted to work on a little bit away from the game but still being on tour which we’ve done and we are confident he will bounce back and come back really strong,” Arthur explained.

What gave the Australian coach a reason to be optimistic on the third-day morning was the nature of the Hyderabad wicket on which “you can lose wickets in clusters, as it always is in India.”

“If you can get one, you can get two or three pretty quickly because it’s a tough place to start. We saw that yesterday when we lost Matthew Wade and we’re hoping we see a bit of that tomorrow,” Arthur hoped to pick up a few early wickets, starting with those of the two unbeaten centurions.

With their top-order having failed for three straight innings in this series, Arthur said it’s time for them to step up the plate. “We had a pretty tough chat with our batsmen this morning because we thought they’d probably wasted a bit of an opportunity yesterday,” he said.

“Batsmen getting in and then getting out is something they certainly don’t want to do. I think the history of the series so far shows that. When we’ve lost a wicket, we tend to lose them in clumps. (Michael) Clarke getting 130 was sublime, Clarke getting 91 was outstanding.

“Matthew Wade getting to 64, perhaps he should have gone on a little bit. I’m more worried about the guys that are getting to 20 and 30 and getting out because if you get to 20 or 30, you’ve got to be able to go the whole hog and take that responsibility to get a massive first-innings score,” the coach said.