Australia have to quickly review a number of strategic decisions and selection matters ahead of a high-profile home summer
Daniel Brettig in Abu Dhabi19-Oct-2018″Everyone was going ‘was that good or not’ and saying ‘yeah I think it was good’, let’s see it as good.” Those were the words of former selector Jamie Cox when Australia’s then national panel observed Jason Krejza’s 12 for 358 in the 2008 Nagpur Test defeat to India. So many wickets, but so expensive, it was the sort of jumble that resembles a cricketing Rorschach test.Ten years later, and Australia’s expedition to the UAE to face Pakistan has ended with a similar state of jumble for captain Tim Paine, coach Justin Langer and the national selectors. While the ignominy of their heaviest ever loss to Pakistan still lingers, embittered further by the fact the hosts had been 5 for 57 on the first morning and still emerged victorious, it is a more complicated picture overall. Across the past two Tests and two weeks, all of the following has taken place:Australia’s longest ever fourth innings rearguard in terms of overs. Australia’s fourth heaviest defeat, and heaviest ever to Pakistan. Usman Khawaja’s greatest Test performance. Usman Khawaja’s summer under a cloud with a knee injury. Nathan Lyon’s most destructive spell in Tests. Jon Holland’s nervous fingers. Australia’s seventh loss of 10 wickets for under 100 in the past two years. Aaron Finch’s solid audition for opener. Shaun and Mitchell Marsh’s combined 44 runs in eight innings. Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne’s moments of promise. Mitchell Starc’s tight hamstring. A 50% improvement on the 2014 UAE series result. Australia’s fifth and sixth consecutive Tests without a victory, with an average first innings score in that time of 236.From this diverse collection of facts and moments, many of them bordering on the contradictory, Paine, Langer and company must cohesively assess the two Tests in UAE and grow from them a team and a plan for the highest of high profile home series – four Tests against India, starting in Adelaide in early December. Within that planning will be the acknowledgement of the modest state the team is in, but also how different conditions and mindsets will be on home turf in a little more than six weeks’ time.To be unsure about the fitness of Khawaja, booked in for an appointment with a knee surgeon as soon as he returns home, is perhaps the most unsettling fact for AustraliA to cope with. Particularly so when his monumental contribution in Dubai sits right next to the desperately poor showings of Shaun and Mitchell Marsh, who as the side’s oldest player and vice-captain had been so heavily invested in by Langer. Both can look optimistically towards their equally strong showings at home during last summer’s Ashes series, but even those memories must be balanced by the fact they made their runs at Nos. 5 and 6, behind the leading roles played by the banned David Warner, Steven Smith and Khawaja himself.Getty ImagesEven if Khawaja is fit in time to walk out to bat at Adelaide Oval, it is likely he will now do so with precious little cricket behind him. That will present a challenge to Langer and the selectors after they dropped Matt Renshaw at the start of this series on the basis that the young left-hander was short of “time in the middle”. Should Khawaja’s return be delayed for that reason, the problem may actually get worse rather than better – after round six, concluding on December 10, the only top-class cricket Khawaja will be able to play is the Big Bash League.These issues alone will probably mean that Langer and the selectors will be duty-bound to stick with the Marsh brothers, having also elevated Mitchell to the lofty perch of vice-captain. What they will hope for are plenty of domestic runs from the pair in the interim, while at the same time looking for similar from Renshaw, Peter Handscomb, Glenn Maxwell and the other members of the touring top six. Finch, Head and Labuschagne have all shown moments of strong potential, but all face differing challenges after the flight home.Selecting Finch at the top of the order was characterised pre-series as very much a selection for Asian conditions, where openers often get the best of conditions before the ball starts to turn and reverse swing. In Australia, on firmer pitches against a ball that bounces, seams and swings, Finch may well be better suited to more of a middle order role, unless the selectors still deem him the best substitute for Warner’s “century before lunch” kind of enforcer.Head would appear to be the young batsman most heavily invested in by the Australian system, having seemed a likely Test debutant since his teenaged start for South Australia in 2012. In the intervening seven years, Head has developed in terms of consistency, hundred-getting, leadership and proficiency against spin bowling. But in each innings in Abu Dhabi he was sorted out by the relentless lines and bounce of Mohammad Abbas – an excellent, seaming ball in the first and one he might have left alone in the second.As for Labuschagne, there was much to appreciate about his improvement with the bat from innings one to four, while his bounding, bouncing leg spin was a consistent threat for wickets while also being notable for its control. It is too early to discern exactly what sort of cricketer Labuschagne will become, but he has shown enough evidence that it will ultimately be a package of worth at international level. Proof of the lessons learned here would be provided by hundreds in the Shield for Queensland, the better to shore up his berth.In the aftermath of the series, Paine did not ascribe too much blame for defeat to Australia’s bowlers, noting that they had been starting from behind their Pakistani counterparts in terms of the toss of the coin, and also a lack of major first innings runs to either defend or capitalise upon. But Starc’s weary visage and tight hamstring provided a reminder that fast bowling remains an extremely risky career path, and there will be plenty of discussions about how best to ensure him, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood are able to replicate the level of performance sustained during last summer’s Ashes.At the same time, a conversation about the quality of the nation’s batting stocks, well and truly begun in the winter months that followed the bans for Warner and Smith, will only gain in urgency. Paine, himself the scorer of only a solitary first-class century in his career, was quick to look far more broadly than the Test team when asked about the substandard cycle of batting collapses and inadequate first innings scores that have bedevilled Australia.”There’s no doubt this has been happening for too long for the Australian cricket team, not just our Test team but probably domestically, there’s a lot of collapses throughout our batting group,” Paine said. “A lot of it can be technical, some guys will be mental and other guys will be tactical or your plans not being right for certain bowlers. There’s no shying away from the fact we’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do with our batting, and that’s not just this team, it’s throughout the whole country.”To get to the bottom of that problem, it may be more relevant to look at the cultural reviews soon to be released by Cricket Australia as the governing body’s way of closing the unhappy chapter opened up by the Newlands ball tampering scandal.In the meantime, Langer and his fellow decision-makers are left with a set of problems needing urgent band aids before the arrival of India’s Test team. In this, they don’t resemble the selectors mulling over Krejza so much as the CIA operative Tony Mendez settling on a Hollywood cover story to get their diplomats out of Iran during the 1980 hostage crisis, as depicted in Argo: “There are only bad options. It’s about finding the best one.”
