News: No excuse for our defeats in Australia tour: Salman Butt

Having lost three Test matches and four One-day Internationals to Australia in a row, Pakistan have touched their all time low in terms of performance. This has invited rave criticism from the former players and fans back home.

This has also been the fourth successive time in ten years when Australia has whitewashed a Test series against Pakistan but this time the sub-continent players could even manage to come back in the 50-over version of the game which has been Pakistan’s strength off late.

Pakistan opener Salman Butt apologized to all their fans and supporters on behalf of the team.

"Pakistan is a cricket loving nation, the people eat, sleep and breathe cricket and I feel that as a team we have let our fans down during the current tour of Australia. I know what it is like to wake up through the night and watch your team lose again and again. I know what it feels like, because as a youngster I too was a cricket fan watching my heroes in action and its heartbreaking when your team loses," Butt told Pakpassion.net.

Butt was the only one who shone out with his performance during Tests scoring the highest with a total of 280 runs from three matches; however, he confessed that the Aussies are a tough team to compete with.

"Australia is always a tough tour for any team and yes in the past our teams have lost here, but we can't use that as an excuse for our defeats on this tour. We have simply not performed well and have not been good enough," he said.

After the drubbing in Tests, Pakistan hoped to come back strong in the one-dayers which they considered to be their forte. But having already lost the ODI-series 4-0 with one match left, it is high time that the team learnt from their mistakes.

"We all need to learn from this experience and to look at our mistakes and to use the tour to become better players in future. Nobody on the tour can walk away and say they can't improve aspects of their game. We all need to analyse our individual performances and look to improve our standard of cricket," Butt said.

Meanwhile, the final ODI will be played on Sunday in Perth and Australian fast-bowler Shaun Tait has been named as a replacement for Peter Siddle, who is battling with a back problem.

"Peter Siddle is still being troubled the back pain which kept him out of the third match of the series in Adelaide. As such he is in doubt for tomorrow's fifth ODI and therefore another fast bowler has been included as a standby player," Australia's physiotherapist, Alex Kountouris, said.

Tait, who has been suffering from injuries himself, is only concentrating on the limited-overs matches. But after a good domestic season the selectors decided to include him in the squad.

"Shaun Tait at his best is a destructive fast bowler in both limited-over and Twenty20 cricket. He has progressed well this season and performed well in both the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash and the recent Ford Ranger game against New South Wales in Wollongong and we are sure he will be ready should he be required for tomorrow's match," Andrew Hilditch, the chairman of the national selection panel, said.

After the final ODI both the teams will be playing a one-off Twenty20 match on February 5.