No cricket team is ever truly stable. As Ferris Bueller noted, life moves pretty fast. Compared to recent years, though, Australia’s Test line-up looks steady ahead of the Ashes. The top five is set – with one caveat, to be discussed – while the first-choice bowling attack is not just known, but getting into rhythm together for New South Wales.
The narrow gap between these sturdy ends has become the plughole where uncertainty swirls and gurgles. Right now, there are literally a dozen candidates who could round out the top six at the Gabba. Four wicketkeepers could take the spot below. It is the mark of a domestic system where batsmen no longer dominate, where irresistible cases are no longer made.
Potential is the spectre that haunts Australian batting. Hints of talent without tangible form, lurking in peripheral vision. Travis Head, a genius with the white ball and mediocre against red. Marcus Stoinis as a development project aged 28. The Marsh brothers are Perth’s poltergeists, never exorcised. Nick Maddinson, Moises Henriques, Hilton Cartwright have had more charity Tests than the Sydney Cricket Ground. Kurtis Patterson could be next. Daniel Hughes drew Steve Smith’s attention with a first-grade knock. Jake Lehmann has the lineage, the left-hand stance, and a licence to hit. Callum Ferguson and Glenn Maxwell spent years as the next big thing, only to be held back by those at the top.
Any of the 12 could play the first Test, but none due to an irrefutable body of work. Instead it will likely be a shootout in the third Sheffield Shield round starting on Monday. This was the model for the frantic cleanout last year after South Africa demolished Australia in Hobart, but it needn’t have been the case for the first game of a new season.
If the nine established players show where Australian selection has got things right, the undecided spots show where it goes wrong. Lack of domestic dominance leads to the obsession with potential: selectors hunch over tea leaves in the hope a middling Shield player can suddenly boss a higher level. This allows too much emphasis on personality and perception, so that players known and liked within the national setup get the benefit of hunches. Those less favoured are stamped with a big red X for life.
Ed Cowan is an obvious example. As broadly reported, the Sydney opening batsman made the most Shield runs in the country across the last three seasons, topped the scoring last season while averaging nearly 74, and won the Steve Waugh medal for New South Wales player of the year. The first game next season, he was out of the side.
This was because New South Wales had to accommodate Test players Smith and David Warner, and wanted to jam Maddinson, Hughes, Henriques and Patterson into the side. With three games to impress selectors, any of those four were seen as Test candidates. The most telling part is that, with a vastly superior record to any, Cowan wasn’t seen as a Test candidate.
In a sensible world, Cowan would have tuned up in case he was needed during the Ashes. This is the aforementioned caveat to Australia’s top five: there will be a close eye on young Matthew Renshaw. Concerns have been overstated: while he hasn’t been making huge scores for Queensland, he has been batting long innings, which is exactly what you want at the top against Stuart Broad and James Anderson. But if he has a run of failures, and the series is at stake, a short-term replacement might be needed. Someone who’s been there before, won’t be overawed, and has the best recent record in the country at that position.
Except the message is clear that it won’t be Cowan. When Darren Lehmann replaced Mickey Arthur as Australian coach in 2013, Cowan had just been the most reliable performer on a disastrous tour of India. He had been close to Arthur, earning hostility from senior team-mates, and was everything Lehmann wouldn’t like: defensive with the bat, prepared to speak out, a smart specky rich kid who didn’t just read books but wrote one. You don’t have to read widely to figure that Lehmann doesn’t rate cricketers he doesn’t like. Cowan would play one more Test, pushed out the door to bat at Trent Bridge after being up all night vomiting with flu. When he was out, the red X was visible from the stands.
Personal friction is also relevant to the question of No6. If potential is a marker, Maxwell is the best natural striker of the ball in the country. You would think a player of such ability should be nurtured, but his captain and coach at times respond with frustration. Take the ludicrous “internal discipline” after a Maxwell press conference last year. Would you like to bat higher up the order for Victoria? Yes. Why don’t you? I’m not the captain. This was deemed an act of disrespect to national team-mate Matthew Wade, and Maxwell ran drinks for three ODIs.
It’s a pattern of one step forward, two back, in making him an established international. A player picked in Tests across four Asian tours, but never deemed good enough for one at home. In Ranchi this year, he made his breakthrough Test century, tailoring his game to the conditions and helping earn a draw that kept the series alive. That would have been the time for an arm around the shoulders, making the most of the achievement. That’s it, you’ve cracked it. Now settle, focus, and know you’ll be batting six this summer.
Imagine what someone of Maxwell’s ability could do across a Test summer, with an attacking game honed on the bouncy tracks of Australia. Imagine he had gone into the Shield with that surety, free to work on his game rather than needing to impress. Imagine how he could terrorise a touring team across 10 innings, like Adam Gilchrist did, like Andrew Symonds learned to. The key for Symonds was that he had the backing.
And imagine Australia picked wicketkeepers based on wicketkeeping. Matthew Wade, Peter Nevill, and Alex Carey are all being watched for runs, and none can make any of note. Cameron Bancroft is suddenly a contender, after carrying his bat for 76 and then making 86 in his two innings against the blue-blood New South Wales attack. But no score will change his part-time status with the gloves.
Instead, we’ll have one more audition round. Maxwell trying to build on his twin 60s at the MCG. Lehmann junior vaulting into contention with a hundred and a 90 in the same game. Ferguson not part of the conversation a week ago, but back in the frame with a huge unbeaten ton.
Shaun Marsh with two fifties in four knocks. Just the one so far for Head, Patterson, Cartwright and Hughes. None for Maddinson, Henriques, Marsh or Stoinis. Instead of preparing for a top-order contingency, New South Wales throwing in every chip for an insane lottery in the middle. Where the number lands is anybody’s guess. But it didn’t need to be like that.
