Australia coach Tim Nielsen came to the defence of his bowlers after they needed more than 80 overs to dismiss Sussex in their Ashes tour opener at Hove here on Thursday.
At stumps on the second day of four, Australia were 18 without loss in their second innings - an overall lead of 56 - after the hosts had made 311 in reply to the tourists' first innings 347.
Pacemen Stuart Clark, Brett Lee, Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus are all battling to join Mitchell Johnson, rested from this match, in Australia's attack for the first Test against England at Cardiff on July 8. Clark took three wickets for 46 runs, with the faster Lee claiming three for 53 although his return included eight no-balls. Siddle had figures of two for 33 and Hilfenhaus one for 31.
Encouragingly for England, off-spinner Nathan Hauritz, the lone specialist slow bowler in Australia's squad and often portrayed as the weakest link in their attack, went wicketless in an 18-over spell that yielded 98 runs on a pitch taking turn.
"Some days if you're not quite on your game and the opposition are playing well then you're certainly going to get hurt, our challenge is to work out why it didn't go quite so well for us today," said Nielsen.
"It was good for us to have to work hard through their lower order and they played pretty well. "As for the no balls, shocking weren't they! We're pulling our hair out about them and it's the only thing I am a bit grumpy about tonight.
"We don't bowl them in Twenty20, maybe because it's a free hit after, but we didn't have a bowler apart from (Simon) Katich who didn't concede a no ball today.
"It's certainly something we've got to fix up and work at. Look, we've had our first roll since March 15 in a four-day game but we're certainly not going to panic because guys have not had the best days.
"When we sat down and tried to organise our tour that was exactly the reasoning behind having two tour games against counties. "We wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to give all the players good quality playing time before the first Test came around to get any kinks out of the system and we started that process here today."
Turning to Hauritz, the coach added: "I thought he was good in patches but didn't bowl as well as he would have liked in other patches, but that was generally the day of all our bowlers I think. He won't be sitting back tonight thinking it's all roses that's for certain.
"More than half the runs Sussex scored were in boundaries and that sums the day up for us, we probably bowled one loose ball an over, be it Nathan or the quicks, and the times we were able to bowl with some control and to our fields were the times we got lots of wickets."
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