Oz batting coach Law warns batting hopefuls to ``raise standards or forget baggy green``

Sydney: Australia batting coach Stuart Law has warned the nation`s batting hopefuls to lift their standards and find the ruthless streak of long-gone eras.

Law, a hard-nut toughened by one of the Sheffield Shield`s most competitive eras, said the nation`s batsmen must turn back time to when a generation of state stars churned out 1000-run Shield seasons and regularly made big, attention-grabbing centuries. Queensland great Law played only one Test, in 1995, and had to score four Shield centuries in a season in which he averaged 77 before winning his solitary baggy green cap. The only player to have made more than one Shield century this season is 35-year-old wicketkeeper Brad Haddin, a poor reflection on some of the young batting hopefuls. "We have got to take it with the intention that (more than) just one good score is going to get you up in headlights. We are trying to get a ruthless streak back into our batters that we had going through domestic cricket 25 years ago," News.com.au quoted Law, as saying. "If we can get that back, where players aren`t just scoring 50s or 60s and expecting the next step to happen, but they are scoring 100s and 150s and doing it consistently, not just once or twice but three or four times, that will put their name up in headlights," he added. Recalled Test batsman Phil Hughes and Tasmanian Alex Doolan (409 Shield runs at 58 this season) are the only specialist batsmen who have really leapt out of the pack this season. ANI