In the end, there were few surprises. Even the most foregone conclusion of an Ashes squad will still create weeks of speculation one way or another, but answering one question at the top of the order has knocked over the other unresolved ones, tipping like dominoes as we make our way down the list.
Barring injury, the only new player in the eventual XI will be Jake Weatherald, the 31‑year‑old Northern Territorian who in cricketing terms became a South Australian and then a Tasmanian, earning his place over several seasons of unflashy consistency and a willingness to counterattack. Weatherald would not have made the squad if he were not going to open the batting, which means that Marnus Labuschagne, who was always going to make the team one way or another after getting his run-scoring groove back, will bat at No 3 rather than moonlighting at the top.
Labuschagne at three means that there is room for only one of Cameron Green or Beau Webster at six. Green, if he can prove he is over some side soreness in the upcoming Sheffield Shield game, wins that contest by a margin of two Test hundreds, 15km/h of bowling speed, and five years of being an unfinished Cricket Australia lab project to engineer the ultimate cricket specimen.
Green and Webster both being in the squad means that the Mitch Marsh flight of fancy is formally over, with the white‑ball captain not getting a late call‑up despite crushing runs in the shorter formats. He could have belted a few at six, but the idea of Marsh doing a 2013 George Bailey has been quashed by the 2025 George Bailey, with the long-ago middle-order bat now the chair of selectors. Weatherald, Labuschagne and Green will join the locked-in Steve Smith, Travis Head and Usman Khawaja.
Mishaps aside, the only thing that could change any of this after a couple of matches would be the returns of Khawaja as the other opening bat. Some brusque judges of the game watching from the stands during the rum-soaked tour of the Caribbean this year may have observed audibly that his eyes are now painted on, a line that for the past two years has looked to have some justification against proper pace.
Now Khawaja may have to face not one but both of the two fastest England bowlers on record. Jofra Archer and Mark Wood have between them sent down a collection of the most rapid England spells since reliable speed records began in 2006, and while both have had so many injuries that you can’t assume their availability in a fortnight, they may both line up at Perth hoping for a quick bouncy track. Khawaja takes great satisfaction from defying perceived criticism, and he might respond with a defining score in the first two Tests. But if he collects four low ones in Perth and Brisbane, he might not make it to Adelaide.
Of the rest of the squad, Josh Inglis is the reserve wicketkeeper behind Alex Carey and the reserve bat behind everybody else, with his range being quite the luxury. Brendan Doggett and Sean Abbott are the spare fast bowlers, with Doggett clearly the next in after being namechecked multiple times by Bailey in the past few weeks. The frontline bowlers are of course three quarters of the old firm – Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon – along with supersub Scott Boland. The injured Pat Cummins will be with the squad but not of the squad when in Perth, performing his role as series captain even though Smith officially has the job for that match on the field.
It will be strange to have Smith rolling up for the start of a series as captain, doing the pre-match press conferences and the toss and all of that rigmarole, while knowing that he is a stand-in. It is already giving flashbacks to when he had the full-time job in 2017, before one of his most epic sequences of Ashes run-scoring. But will he also be the one doing the blazer photos and the trophy fondling and the other content capture in the lead-up, given those images will run through the series? Or will it be Cummins to do those jobs? The latter is the man with the full-time gig, but if he has a later injury setback then he may not feature in the series at all. For now, though, looking ahead to the coming weeks, Cummins remains the only known unknown.
