Australia’s Test top six have been told to forget about a highly publicised debate over the batting order and concentrate on rectifying the team’s most troublesome trend – a crippling lack of defining scores since midway through the Ashes.
As Steve Smith, Usman Khawaja and others spoke openly about the shape of the top six in recent weeks, numerous senior figures in and around the team muttered about how the chatter deflected from the fact that no configuration will work if members of the top six kept struggling for runs.
Lately, it has been less a batting order than a battling order.
Marnus Labuschagne and Steven Smith of Australia share a joke.Credit: Getty
Since the start of last summer, the two most significant innings were played by two batters not in the reckoning this time around – the now-retired David Warner’s 164 against Pakistan in Perth, and the injured Cameron Green’s unbeaten 174 against New Zealand in Wellington.
Khawaja, Smith, Marnus Labuschagne, Travis Head and Mitchell Marsh have just one hundred between them over that time, and only Marsh has made runs with anything like consistency.
Those same players will argue with some merit that last summer’s pitches were particularly friendly to seam bowling. But the fact remains that selection chair George Bailey and his panel are far more concerned about the team’s capacity to make enough runs to defeat India this summer, rather than the likelihood of pouching 20 wickets.
“Once everyone understands the role they’re going to play, then the focus rightly should shift to performance and being ready to perform,” Bailey said on Monday. “[I’m] looking forward, as everyone is, to the Test match actually starting and seeing those guys put their best foot forward from a performance perspective.”
Nathan McSweeney, Sam Konstas and Marcus Harris are the leading contenders to slot into two available batting spots in a 13-man squad to be named for the first Test against India in Perth. All will play for Australia A in Mackay from Thursday, with selector Tony Dodemaide on duty to watch.
“We’ve got three players who open the batting for their state and one player who bats three for their state, so four top-order batters to try to fit into three, so there will be some adjustments there,” Bailey said.
“There’s always the perception there’s a little bit more pressure, the standard of cricket is higher so that’s a great opportunity for seeing how players interact in a different team to what they’re used to around their state. All of that is really important.”
Bailey suggested that Josh Inglis, the reserve wicketkeeper in sublime batting touch for Western Australia, would not be in consideration to open. But Inglis will be a live option to come into the batting order during the India series should incumbents succumb to injury or continue to return low scores.
Josh Inglis.Credit: Getty Images
“There’s no doubt the form is really fantastic at the moment – you’ve seen when he has been playing [for] Australia and then the ability to jump back into domestic cricket and dominate as he has, has been fantastic,” Bailey said.
“So [in] different series at different times of the year he would firmly come into the mix purely as a batter, and if the right opportunity opened up throughout the summer in the spots we think he’s most capable of performing, then he’d be firmly in that conversation as well.”
Bailey was also open in calling for more Australian players to develop as left-arm spinners, after New Zealand’s Mitchell Santner was instrumental in engineering India’s first home series loss since 2012.
“[I’m] happy to very much throw it out there that it is an incredible skill set in the subcontinent and we’ve seen that for many years,” Bailey said. “Realistically there’s not a huge amount of players in domestic cricket that are doing it, so it’s something we’re looking to expose.
“It’s certainly one of the reasons why we’re excited about Cooper Connolly and his journey, still very much a work in progress with his left-arm spin.”
Glenn Maxwell and Adam Zampa won’t be leading the Australian Twenty20 side against Pakistan, with the leadership candidate most likely to be one of Victorian Matt Short or the West Australian pairing of Josh Inglis or Aaron Hardie.
“We’ll give it to the person we deem the most appropriate,” Bailey said. “There’s always opportunities for a bit more of an extended leadership group across the white-ball series and the way the strategy groups work and things like that.
“We’ll try to extend that group out a bit and keep trying to grow some capacity around leadership for when the senior guys aren’t there.”
Australia T20 squad: Sean Abbott, Xavier Bartlett, Cooper Connolly, Tim David, Nathan Ellis, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Aaron Hardie, Josh Inglis, Spencer Johnson, Glenn Maxwell, Matthew Short, Marcus Stoinis, Adam Zampa.
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