Captain Tim Paine says Australia is climbing high at the top of Test cricket after a third successive victory at Perth Stadium on Sunday. Australia thrashed New Zealand by 296 runs. After retaining the Ashes in England, Australia have registered victories over Pakistan and New Zealand.

“We are getting there, but we can get better,” he said. “We are still improving, but certainly over the last 18 months there has been drastic improvement in this cricket team,” he said.

“We’ve got some players back, which are helping, but we have also seen some real improvement in the guys who got a chance 18 months ago, and the experienced guys have come back and put a bit of icing on top. We are moving in the right direction and happy with the way we’ve played in the last three or four Tests,” he added.

Tim Paine said it was also pleasing to see other players are taking responsibilities after Steve Smith almost single-handedly retained the Ashes for Australia by scoring a whopping 774 runs. For the first time in his career, Smith has gone three Tests without a half-century recently, but Paine actually sees that as a positive note.

“We touched on at the end of the Ashes,” he said. “We needed other guys to stand up and can’t be reliant on Steve. Obviously Marnus (Labuschagne) has been unbelievably good, and Davey (Warner) and Joe Burns have been scoring runs. If we want to be one of the better teams in the world guys have got to stand up and we can’t be reliant on too few. We are really happy with how our batting has developed,” he concluded.