Hindsight provides perfect, if sometimes troublesome, vision. So let’s use it to examine the current Australian team’s selection policy for the first Test in Sri Lanka.
The critique requires historical context. Test matches are a unique style of sport; each has its own identity, a selective character and a singular and particular place in the 150-year-old record books. A Test doesn’t need a surrounding, legitimising competition or tournament, such as a championship or a grand final, to be considered special. To win a complete Test series is the general aim, but it is often likely that the sum of the parts is more notable than the sum of the whole series.
Popular professional sports have seasons that may extend to more than 160 matches in the case of Major League Baseball or 20-plus matches in the AFL or NRL. The discrete games are important, but come a week or three later, the visions of tackles, goals, tries, etc have given way to the minutiae of the next fixture. Do you remember who scored the try of the round or kicked the goal of the round in March when the finals arrive in September?
However, memories of Warnie bowling Mike Gatting at Old Trafford in the first Test of the 1993 Ashes or how Sam Konstas ramped Jasprit Bumrah in the 2024 Boxing Day Test remain in your dotage. Shane Warne’s opening delivery could claim to have single-handedly reinvigorated interest in the art of leg-spin bowling, while Konstas’ unorthodox strokes arguably changed the course of a close-run and emotional series.
Australia have already qualified for the final of the World Test Championship in June at Lord’s and have no immediate imperative to beat Sri Lanka. If this were a football contest, then the coach would likely be resting his key players to ensure they were fresh and uninjured heading into the “big one”. Would Pat Cummins have skipped this tour if the team needed to win to qualify for the final?The Galle Tests are irrelevant in the WCT context, but worthy of full commitment given the meaning that comes with each match.
How could these importantly unimportant matches be used to improve the Australian Test team? What lessons are there to be learnt from a series in an exotic environment?
Travis Head opens the batting in Galle on day one.Credit: Getty Images
A couple of weeks at the summer school pitches might provide an experience you just can’t buy. The medium to long-term benefits for rookie teenager Konstas are immeasurable. There is no substitute for experience out in the middle battling and padding your way to Test match runs, no matter what Steve Smith may say about the value to Konstas of unfettered hours in the nets.
The problem with Travis Head opening the batting is that it was great for Travis Head but did nothing to help the future of the Australian Test team. Head has been the engine room, and saviour, of the batting recently, devouring attacks, playing crucial roles in winning matches while the batting around him has floundered.
Sam Konstas is enjoying some very expensive net sessions in Sri Lanka.Credit: Getty Images
If he had asked the Galle Cricket Club net bowlers to serve up half volleys on leg stump or wide long hops, they couldn’t have done better or worse than Asitha Fernando’s opening salvo of a mixed pie platter. Konstas would have no need for the show-ring strokes against that dross; MCC coaching manual drives and cuts would have sufficed to score quickly.
Head and Usman Khawaja survived early on day one at Galle via dropped catches and the hosts’ poor use of DRS. Therefore, the experiment of Head opening the batting can hardly be judged a success.
Head’s promotion did not take the team forward in the wider sense. The investment in Head and the retention of Khawaja are limited to two weeks in Sri Lanka and maybe another eight months until Khawaja’s apparently looming self-announced retirement comes into effect. The lollies offered by the Sri Lankan bowling and fielding were irresistible and Usman filled his boots to the brim.
Short-term dividends are cashed in, but who will occupy the crease to produce medium- and long-term yields?
Speculate to accumulate, the profiteers say. Did the selectors class the original Konstas selection as “speculation” that could be cashed in at a moment’s notice? Surely not. Any selections come with risk. The risk of the batting failing on the docile Galle pitch was almost zero.
The timing of these two Tests was ideal for an investment strategy in the opening bat asset class. A young, successful specialist bat, who had the opportunity to grow in the foreign soil, has been, due to the myopia of the selectors, sent on an expensive net session.
At times the Sri Lankan bowlers and fielders looked like club cricketers after a long Friday night.
It is time for the panel to be expanded so that there is a selector at each state fixture. The selectors need to examine the character, skill and match competitiveness of all the other players trying their backsides off to get into the top team.
Konstas was set up for a fall immediately after the Sydney Test. The strategy spruiked for weeks was for a bespoke batting order made specifically for big-spinning pitches. Funny, I thought selections and batting orders were always tailor-made for the conditions and the skill set of the opposition?
The playing conditions have suited Head, Khawaja and Steve Smith beautifully: winning the toss, getting the pitch at its best for batting against an opponent who is listless and underwhelming. At times the Sri Lankan bowlers and fielders looked like club cricketers after a long Friday night.
The Australian batsmen have done what is expected; they have “played what is in front of them”, and succeeded clinically. Big scores made in favourable conditions can emboss an average that fell during the bowler-dominated series against India.
Josh Inglis hammered a century on debut against Sri Lanka, but will he get another chance?Credit: Getty Images
The short-term return on this selection is to win a Test match that does not need to be won: it needed to be played with a strong will to win, played skilfully with an eye wide open and peering into the future. And the weather may yet play the biggest role.
The selectors might find it time to open both eyes; binocular vision discerns both the breadth and depth of a team.
The individual milestones will be duly noted: Smith’s 10,000th Test run and 35th ton; Khawaja a career-best 232; Josh Inglis a deserved debut, albeit in Head’s middle-order spot.
But, despite his ton against drained bowlers pulverised by the early order, will Inglis be considered a short-term investment, as Konstas was?
Well played them, but a gilt-edged chance to reduce the future risk profile of the team has been missed.
