In the early evening Abu Dhabi sunlight, in a wash of warm mango colour that lit up the grass and the grandstands of the Sheikh Zayed Stadium, we may just have seen the last of Shaun Marsh’s Test career.
Of course, that has been said plenty of times before. Marsh has shown a Michael Myers-like ability to pop up for another instalment after even the most comprehensive horrorshow seems to have marked the end of his franchise.
This time the possible striker of the final blow was Mir Hamza, a young left-arm fast bowler on debut coming off a prodigious record in Pakistan domestic cricket. Hamza’s team had batted in the third innings to an even 400 runs, then declared nine wickets down, leaving an exhausted Australian side either 538 runs to win, or a touch over two days to draw.
That process started with 12 overs to survive on the third day, and when a batsman is battling for form, it seems that fate can make especially cruel decisions. First, Marsh was pushed up to open the batting, with Usman Khawaja ineligible after missing the day’s fielding stint with a knee problem. Second, Marsh got an absolute pearler of a delivery.
Over the wicket Hamza came to the left-handed batsman, releasing a ball that came down like a fast bowler’s dream. In the strange late light it hummed into the batsman, pitched and jagged away. Marsh’s defensive grope met thin air, the ball clipped the off bail. Perfection.
But it was not as simple as bad luck. Marsh had faced the third ball of the innings from Mohammad Abbas – the pinpoint seamer who had drawn his edge to slip in the first innings – and flailed at a wide ball angled across him.
He stumbled while pushing at the next ball and nearly nicked it again. He threw a panicked drive at the next and edged it just over gully’s outstretched hands. Finally he remembered how to play a defensive shot, but managed only two before Hamza ended his stay. The edged boundary was his only score.
As his last bat for this short series, it put the full stop on a recent Test streak for Marsh that reads 24, 1, 26, 0, 16, 7, 7, 0, 3 and 4. Seven dismissals in single figures in his last 10 innings at this level.
Have you ever seen anything like it? Azhar Ali was run out in the strangest of circumstances earlier today! 😲 #PAKvAUS pic.twitter.com/s2WbostY10
— ICC (@ICC) October 18, 2018
This is of course the endless dilemma of Shaun Marsh. There are times when no cricketer looks more supremely in control of their game. During the Ashes summer not even a year ago, he showed intense patience and control in making a half-century in Brisbane and a century in Adelaide that turned around tricky team positions and swung the first two matches Australia’s way. He cashed in with a bonus hundred in Sydney after the series was decided.
Since then, across tours to South Africa and now the United Arab Emirates, he’s averaged 13.41.
No one can get out of form like Marsh. With 14 runs at an average of 3.5, this Emirates effort is not even his worst series: that came in 2011-12 against India, when he managed 17 runs in six innings at 2.85.
Over the course of his career, an astonishing 42% of his dismissals are worth single figures. Compare that to contemporaries like Khawaja, Steve Smith, Ricky Ponting or Shane Watson, whose records range from 22-27%.
Marsh has a lot of support within the current national set-up. Australian men’s coach Justin Langer was his roommate on Western Australian tours when a young Marsh made his first state century in 2003, and predicted at the time that Marsh would play a hundred Tests.
Currently that mark instead stands at 34, but that still makes he and Khawaja the most experienced batsmen in the side. At 35 years of age Marsh is also the oldest in the XI. Given the dearth of experience, and his form the previous home summer, there’s every chance he’ll be retained for the next home season against India and Sri Lanka.
Perhaps he will dominate again. He could play four Sheffield Shield rounds and post compelling numbers to show that he has regained touch. But there is also an argument that even if Marsh makes a thousand runs before the first Test in December, he is not worth the risk. It is a matter of whether even his best is worth his worst.
One unavoidable fact is this: with the leadership vacuum following the removal of the former captain and vice-captain, given his relative seniority in the side, Marsh was the one asked to step up within the team and to move up the order. But since the ball-tampering plot was exposed in Cape Town, he has passed double figures once in seven attempts.
Experience is a nice idea, but inexperienced players like Travis Head (17 not out) and Aaron Finch (24 not out) have already produced more tangible results. Australia cannot hope to win or save the Abu Dhabi Test, and it would be unfair to have expected Marsh to produce a miracle. But Babar Azam (99), Sarfraz Ahmed (81) and Azhar Ali (64) all showed the surface was still a decent one to bat on.
Finch and Head will resume on day four at 47 for 1 in the hope of building something. Marsh had the chance to do the same to provide some surety before the home season. Instead, if his story is to continue, he will need to once more come back from the void.
