If the Australian cricket selectors are looking for someone to open the batting, David Warner has reminded them that they have him on speed-dial. As silly as his offer sounded when he made it last week, it’s no sillier than the logic that got him selected since 2019, so it can’t be ruled out.
Does Warner have recent performances to back him up? No, but nor had he for the five years before he “retired” last January. So nothing has changed. Does he have the supreme self-confidence that became a substitute for form? You don’t need me to answer that. Is there a better candidate?
In the triple fluffs of the openers auditioning for Australia A against India on Thursday, Warner’s hot breath could actually be seen condensing on their necks. Do Sheffield Shield runs count? For Cameron Bancroft, only when he has stopped scoring them. By contrast, Sam Konstas-mania was sparked by one Shield game. This is not to comment on the claims of either Bancroft or Konstas; it’s just to say that the Shield, which served as the world’s best Test cricket proving ground for 130 years, has been deemed redundant for the past five.
Cricket Australia has given a new contract to its men’s national coach-selector, Andrew McDonald, who has stood helpfully to one side while a team that is now the oldest in 100 years keeps on (literally) picking itself. Australia has been here before, in the 1920s, in 1984 and in 2007-08, when age was not a problem until it became a big problem, and a retiring generation of greats left a vacuum. Each time, the hierarchy said they would never let it happen again. And here we are, again.
McDonald said “future-proofing” the team against such a cycle was “incredibly important”. It’s hard to know what this has meant, at least in the sense of doing something. Was it praying for Will Pucovski? For Cameron Green’s back? For the next Bradman? Future-proofing no longer means using the Sheffield Shield as a transition to Test cricket.
By McDonald’s own admission, the “bridge” to Australian Test selection is now one-day cricket, a different format of the game and a bridge that doesn’t go to the other side. Of the 50 one-day cricketers Australia has inducted in the past decade, two – Travis Head and Alex Carey – have made it to the other side of that bridge to regular Test positions. In Sydney, that’s what we call a “Tibby Cotter Bridge” (round and round, no end in sight).
Credit: Simon Letch
There have been reasons for the previous age cliffs off which Australian cricket has fallen. The Methuselahs of the 1920s (the only team older than the current one) were men playing into middle age to make up for the eight years of Test cricket they lost to the Great War. The slump of the mid-1980s was worsened by the rebel tours to South Africa. In 2007-08, Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden, Damien Martyn, Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie were simply irreplaceable, and they all went at once.
This time, the coming vacuum has been created by a fundamental power shift in the business. Multi-millionaire players with many options outside Test cricket do not receive a tap on the shoulder from middle-managers in tracksuits, or if they did they would shrug it off. Today’s leading players are significant commercial properties and considerably more powerful than mere selectors.
On this tour, India are bringing Virat Kohli, R. Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Rohit Sharma, players deep into their thirties, past their best, recently thrashed by New Zealand at home and, in the case of Ashwin and Jadeja, with no record of achievement on Australian soil. But, like Warner, they are brand names with outsized social media presences who hold great appeal for both casual and brand-driven audiences. Cricket is a business, and it needs recognisable faces to put in its advertising.
It also measures its health by social media engagement. Kohli and Warner are one-man social media industries. When it comes to social media engagement, Warner is good for cricket like Nick Kyrgios is good for tennis. (Someone ought to ask him who built the pyramids and whether the Earth is flat. Watch those socials take off.) India, at least, are trying to manage a transition, with half their team in their twenties, some returning after winning the last two Border-Gavaskar series here.
The mania surrounding NSW batsman Sam Konstas was sparked by one Sheffield Shield game.Credit: Getty Images
When the teams take the field in Perth on November 22, half of the Indian players will be younger than the baby of the Australian team, the 30-year-old Marnus Labuschagne, unless Nathan McSweeney can break in (McSweeney would be a natural replacement for Steve Smith at number four, but Smith has already selected himself). No Test cricket team has ever been without a single player in their twenties. For an Australian under 30, we’ve finally found one thing that’s harder than buying a house.
McDonald is popular with the senior players, who have formed a perfect protective circle by encouraging his reappointment. Why wouldn’t they? His man-management mantra is about standing aside and letting grown men be themselves and make their own decisions. If they want to keep playing for Australia, then that’s their choice. Selectors count themselves privileged to get a free tracksuit and a seat in the changing room. Their mission is to box-tick the best team “this week”, which carries an explicit bias toward past performances. If that was the priority in 1999, Ian Healy would never have been dropped and Adam Gilchrist would never have had a Test career.
The present panic attack over the opening batting position is an early tremor. Eventually, Usman Khawaja will realise that he is 37 and has a life to live (the emergence of Khawaja as a late-in-life opener, suddenly the foundation stone of Australia’s order, shows how one player can cover up for years of negligence from the selectors). Smith will run out of positions in the batting order in which to slot himself. Mitch Marsh will eventually stop defying gravity. Then there are the aches and pains for Mitchell Starc (34), Josh Hazlewood (33), Patrick Cummins (31) and Scott Boland (35). There’s a cliff coming, and it’s not Cliff Young.
If things get wobbly against India, we’ll see how “incredibly important” all of that “future-proofing” has been. To make a comparison, we are coming out of the football season in which professional teams have their rosters planned three, four and five years in advance. Cricket? Roster management? Succession planning? Future proofing? Yeah, nah. Just ask the boys when they want to retire, cross your fingers, and if things get desperate, phone Davey.
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