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Bracken backs Australia to come good

Nathan Bracken

Nathan Bracken believes the new players are having a positive effect on the squad

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Paceman Nathan Bracken believes Australia will not be distracted by the dispute between Brad Haddin and Daniel Vettori as they bid to end their four-match losing streak in one-day internationals.

Australia trail the Black Caps 1-0 in the series following the tourists' thrilling victory in Perth on Sunday.

Following the reverse, Vettori queried whether Haddin should have known that his gloves were in front of the stumps and may have dislodged the bails in the dismissal of Kiwi batsman Neil Broom at a critical stage of the contest.

Haddin has taken the comments as a slight on his integrity, but Bracken refused to believe the stand-off between the two men would have a negative effect on his side, saying if anything it would be an added motivation to turn their poor run around.

"We pull together, we always have in tough times and not winning cricket games is probably enough motivation to do it," said Bracken.

"Obviously we have to pull together, we don't have a choice.

"If we want to win this series we've got to play good cricket and if it means we've got to use that (the dispute between Vettori and Haddin) as a motivation thing, then we have to.

"The fact is the guys want to win cricket games, the new blokes coming in want to win. Nobody wants to come into an Australian team and lose.”

Two new faces in the side are Adam Voges and Callum Ferguson, who replace skipper and injured opener Shaun Marsh and Ricky Ponting respectively.

Adam Voges

Adam Voges has come in to replace the injured Shaun Marsh as an opening batsman

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Bracken admitted it was a tough decision to rest Ponting at this stage, but believed it was done to benefit the team in the long run.

"For him it's not an easy thing to sit back and not be around the boys and not be part of the games," Bracken said of Ponting.

"We're good enough to go out and perform well in these two games we've got without Ricky and I don't see a problem that blokes aren't going to want to say, 'I'll put my hand up and score some runs here'.

"I know the boys want to win games and bring him back into a winning culture again.

"We need Ricky to go to South Africa, we need Ricky through the Ashes and the thing is he's had a massive workload.

"For him to have a break and freshen up, he might come back for the last two games and peel of two hundreds for us and get us over the line in the series.

"If that happens I know everybody's going to be saying what a great decision it was from the selectors."

Bracken added that the inclusion of Voges and Ferguson was having a positive effect on the “tough” mood in the camp.

"There's no sitting moping around because you've got young blokes here who want to play cricket, who are loving playing for their country and who just bring something special every time," he concluded.

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