Adelaide: Travis Head has opened up about his refusal to weigh into the Australian Test opening debate that followed the retirement of David Warner, saying suggestions he never wanted the top order role were “untrue”.
Ever since Warner rode off into the Test match sunset at the SCG in January, Head has offered only short, clipped responses to questions about opening the batting and any conversations he may have had with captain Pat Cummins and the selectors.
Travis Head smokes one through the covers.Credit: Getty Images
In England during the recent white-ball tour, he quipped “keep the chatter, it makes it interesting”, and in Perth before the first Test, Head shut down any discussions with “we’ll leave that there. I’m not answering”.
Speaking more candidly in Adelaide before his 51st Test match, Head acknowledged he was a strong chance to be opening in Sri Lanka next year.
But he also said public commentary from players about the opening position – which was briefly taken up by Steve Smith before Nathan McSweeney got the nod for this series following Cameron Green’s back surgery – had been an unwanted distraction.
“I don’t think it needs to be spoken about. I think it just creates too much bullshit really. That’s just my point of view,” Head told this masthead. “This happened to me the first time when I backed up a couple of mates, Marcus Harris and a few others who open the batting, and I come out and say ‘yes I do want to open the batting’, and that creates a headline.
“If I then say ‘no’, which I did in support of those guys, and at that time I had conversations where I knew I wasn’t opening the batting, so I was honest in the media. But when it was reverted around this year it’s been ‘he never wanted it in the first place’, which isn’t true. I want whatever is right for the team, but in the way I answered it, people interpret it in certain ways.
“So I’m done with talking about that conversation. Some of those conversations need to stay in-house, that’s how it will be and that’s how I’ve answered it in the last 12 months. Because I don’t want to put anyone in a [difficult] position, I don’t want to cause a headline or miscommunication or confusion in another player when people interpret things in different ways.”
Head was captain of South Australia at the age of 21, and has had years of navigating the pitfalls of public conversations that then rebound within a team. His viewpoint differs markedly from those of Smith and Usman Khawaja, who spoke much more freely about the opening position this year.
“It’s an unwanted distraction for me and I think it would be an unwanted distraction in how it’s interpreted by other people,” he said. “Someone is reading at home who’s an opening batter and all of a sudden it comes out that I want to.
“But there’s ‘I want to’ and there’s ‘am I’, and they’re two different things. In the first instance [in 2023] I knew I wasn’t going to be, and in this instance no one needs to know what was going to happen. That’s for us to worry about, and now it’s pretty obvious what’s going on.”
Head says “some of those conversations need to stay in-house”.Credit: Getty Images
Australia’s tactical decision for home conditions against India was to not try to replicate the dynamic created by Warner’s aggression at the top. Instead, they have a more orthodox top three, ideally hoping to put overs into the legs of Jasprit Bumrah and company before Head, Mitchell Marsh and Alex Carey can score off an older ball.
But that is likely to change in Sri Lanka, where Head struggled in 2022. That led to him being unexpectedly dropped from the team for the first Test in India last year before he re-emerged as an opening after Warner went home injured. Head coach Andrew McDonald has spoken about needing batting order flexibility to suit conditions.
“I’m open to whatever looks like us winning a game of cricket,” Head said. “That’s for ‘Ron’ and ‘Cummo’ [Cummins] and the selectors to worry about. All I can do is play well, and if I fit somewhere different in the puzzle, whether that be in the position I feel most comfortable or if it’s somewhere I don’t, that doesn’t ever faze me. I haven’t got one set position.
“I’ve never worried too much about where I bat, I don’t really care where I bat if I’m honest, I’m happy to bat where I best fit for the team. At the moment it’s at five and it has been for a while.
“I’m playing a certain way. I’m not forcing it, and they haven’t directed me to say ‘hey, this is the way we want you to play’, it comes naturally, and they said from the start they want me to play the way I see the game and attack the game the way I see it.”
Head expressed optimism that McSweeney would make a mark as an opener this summer, having already been influential in Adelaide by taking over the South Australian captaincy. Head, aged 30 and with a young family, had wanted to hand over the role for a couple of years.
“It was perfect timing for me with a young family, with a different life and everything,” he said. “They’ve been very supportive, CA and the SACA, and it felt like the right time to find someone to give SA what they needed. I felt like I couldn’t do that with everything going on, I didn’t feel like I could really be there enough and that’s been brewing for a few years.
“So Nathan was the right man and he’s shown that already in the time he’s been doing it. I think he’s got a good temperament for [opening], but everyone needs a bit of luck here or there and a little bit of confidence.”
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