Khawaja and Burns deliver when it matters
In his own playing career Mark Waugh had a knack for the kind of fleeting, impressionistic moments of brilliance that lingered in the mind’s eye for years. As a national selector involved in formulating the Australian side that just pummeled New Zealand in the first Test of the summer, this week he made a few comments that he’ll hope are forgotten a little quicker.
All’s well that ends well, but of all the verbal sparring between the two sides in the lead-up to Brisbane, Waugh’s needlessly specific Test-eve declaration that batting inclusions Joe Burns and Usman Khawaja had only two Tests to prove their worth before facing the axe jarred more than any because they seemed a self-inflicted blow.
“Like anything, no one is guaranteed a spot in the team ever, you’ve got to perform. They are there for a couple of Tests,” Waugh told radio station Triple M on the eve of the match. “We’re just fingers crossed that they perform. There is nothing certain in any sport.”
With Waugh’s fingers now uncrossed it’s worth pondering exactly what is to be read from his pre-game statements, whether they reflected the opinions of the entire selection panel or the more benign possibility that they were intended primarily as a motivational gambit. If the former, they’re a decent insight into Burns’s omission from the winter tours of the West Indies and England, for which he was discarded despite scoring a pair of half-centuries in the final two Tests of the preceding Australian summer.
In the intervening period and depending on which way you look at it, Burns’s place was taken by a combination of Shaun Marsh, Shane Watson, Chris Rogers, Adam Voges and in essence, all-rounder Mitchell Marsh.
In Waugh’s defence you could also suggest that he was merely positioning Western Australian Cameron Bancroft as the unlucky loser in the whole scenario. But the more interesting inference related to Khawaja because it perpetuated a recurring theme of the left-hander’s career; that he remains guilty until proven innocent, always seeking to avoid the axe rather than publicly backed to succeed. Khawaja has hardly helped his own cause in this regard, failing to register more than one first-class century in an Australian summer since he struck three in 2009-10.
But by the close of day three at the Gabba, by which time the left-hander had peeled off 174 runs of Goweresque beauty, the selectorial hunch couldn’t have been more emphatically vindicated. What became increasingly apparent as the first innings moved on, even with the New Zealand bowlers labouring, was that Australia’s top five now boasted the kind of balance and varied tempo that had been missing in recent years and in Khawaja, the sophistication notably absent from the gung-ho but doomed overseas Test campaigns of that time.
The other obvious claim of Burns and Khawaja is that, at 26 and 28 years old respectively, they promise the continuity lacking in Australia’s batting through the first three years of the Clarke era, where half a dozen batsmen outside the current Test XI were tried and discarded. Other than Burns and Khawaja, only Bancroft (22) fulfills that need for regeneration and longevity. The lack of “now” probably means “never” for 35-year-old Michael Klinger, sadly, while George Bailey (33), Ed Cowan (33) and perhaps even Callum Ferguson (31) might soon approach the same point.
If there was an element of surprise that Bancroft wasn’t picked (and pleasingly for all concerned he went straight out and made a Sheffield Shield century in a typically lengthy stay at the crease), the call to play Burns in his preferred opening slot rather than shunting him down the order came with positive consequences that might not have been so clear from the outset .
The most obvious beneficiary was David Warner, whose need to dictate terms to the bowlers was lessened while Burns quickly compiled his runs. For all the reliability and nous Chris Rogers offered, you sense that Warner might now evolve into the judicious, ego-suppressing batsman we saw across his twin hundreds in Brisbane. Warner faced 224 deliveries in the first innings, 50 more than in any other Test knock he has played. That milestone is a significant one for Australia and an ominous one for bowlers.
Looking laterally, Nathan Lyon will have a lot more time to bowl sides out in the fourth innings of Tests if Australia’s openers keep up the scoring rate they managed here. In this respect – and if he keeps grinding out hundreds at the present rate – Bancroft could be the unluckiest batsmen in Australia for some time because the positions that are most likely to open up in the next 12 to 18 months will be five and six.
More than anything, the selection calls leading into Brisbane underlined what a tough job it is to choose Test sides in this fragmented, fixture-stuffed, format-hopping era. To settle on Khawaja and Burns, Waugh and his fellow panel members really only had limited overs form to go on. The worth of two-day tour games if often questioned, but a century each in the CA XI game at Manuka locked the Queensland pair in. The test for selectors now is blocking out the noise that will come when results are not as comprehensive as in Brisbane.
Another week, another unfit playing surface
Putting pressure on the national selectors by racking up first-class runs is all well and good in theory, but not if games are being forfeited at their present rate in New South Wales. Following on from the New Zealand tour match debacle at Blacktown last week, New South Wales’ Sheffield Shield clash with Victoria was abandoned due to the condition of the SCG outfield. Reading the account of match referee Steve Bernard – who said four players had lost their footing in the space of the final eight deliveries of day two, leaving divots up to a metre long – it’s hard to disagree with his verdict.
“In first-class cricket you expect conditions to be suitable for cricket,” Victorian coach David Saker had said on the second day of the rain-affected match. “The wicket’s fantastic but the outfield and surrounds are quite poor and dangerous.” The situation pitted SCG head curator Tom Parker – who maintains that the outfield was fit for play – against Bernard and the umpires but also more broadly Parker’s employer, the SCG Trust, against Cricket New South Wales. In the meantime the Blues’ next Shield clash has been relocated to Bankstown – where a half-completed grade cricket game will now need to find a new home – as the two parties address their mutual friction and drastic resurfacing work needs doing before January’s Test.
Equally peeved will be Test aspirants Moises Henriques, Glenn Maxwell, Ed Cowan (undefeated on 48 when play ceased) and Peter Siddle, who missed out on valuable time in the middle. But the money quote came from Cricket New South Wales CEO Andrew Jones, who said through gritted teeth, “We like to be excellent in Cricket New South Wales and this clearly isn’t excellent”. Neither is the match result for the home side, who cough up all six points.
Captain Grumpy?
There was one sour note for Australia out of the final day’s play at Brisbane when Mitchell Starc was docked 50% of his match fee for quite unnecessarily hurling the ball back at New Zealand’s Mark Craig when the tailender’s innings stretched beyond the tolerance threshold of the paceman.
It might not rank with the great acts of fast bowler petulance but here for Australia to see was a more aggressive and confrontational Starc than the friendly giant whose happy-go-lucky body language was famously derided by Shane Warne last summer. But of greater interest was the reaction of Starc’s new captain Steve Smith, who quickly moved to censure the fast bowler and in tones that suggest he’ll lead the side with a firm hand.
“It was just a bit of frustration and I think he just needs to let it out in other ways,” Smith said after play. “It was pretty disappointing. He’s done it a few times and I’m going to have a word to him when we get back to the sheds.” It’s not Allan Border vs Craig McDermott of course, but neither is it the cherubic, deferential Smith of not so long ago.
