Australian cricket has had several reminders that Father Time remains undefeated. The lingering effects of an end for every cricketer and every era have been hammered home in recent decades as fallow years have followed bumper crops of all-conquering Australians. Yet it remains to be seen whether the lessons of the past have truly been learned as the current men’s Test team starts another summer of cricket rolling towards a cliff edge.
The XI to face India in Perth includes just one, untried player under the age of 30. Twenty-five-year-old Nathan McSweeney will walk out against a pace attack led by Jasprit Bumrah, despite compiling scores of 14 and 25 last week against India A in the only first-class match in which he has opened. While the absence of runs, let alone experience, in the specialist role was not enough to rule out McSweeney in the Great Australian Bat Off, the lack of obvious alternatives surely helped him secure the place. It looks a punt worth taking, despite the fact he will become the first Australian in 47 years to open in his Test debut without batting there at Sheffield Shield level.
The right-hander will also be Australia’s first batter to make a men’s Test debut since Will Pucovski, also against India, in the Sydney Test at the start of 2021, and just the eighth player in that time to be presented with a baggy green. While Pucovski was earmarked to become a long-term Test opener and would have brought the average age of the team down earlier, he now presents a brutal case of “what might have been”.
McSweeney’s selection over 32-year-old Marcus Harris and soon-to-be-32 Cameron Bancroft ensured Australia did not name a Test XI without a player in their 20s for the first time (Josh Inglis is 29, but unlikely to usurp Alex Carey in the team), and leaves 19-year-old Sam Konstas waiting in the wings. Konstas can now spend the summer putting together a body of work to press his claims while remaining one for the future, at least until another spot opens up – whether to partner or replace veteran Usman Khawaja, who will turn 38 during the third Test in Brisbane.
All-rounder Cameron Green is another 25-year-old who could be held up as the first step towards rejuvenating the team, though after cementing his place over the past 18 months he will now sit out this summer due to a back injury. As much as Australia will hope Green returns fit and firing, they also need more Test candidates to emerge – even if the prospect of facing India this summer and an Ashes series on home turf next year is a reason for the incumbents to hang around.
Cricket has changed immeasurably since Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh rode off into the sunset together with a Test series victory over Pakistan in 1984. Following that upheaval, Australia took nine series and almost four years to taste success again. History was repeated when Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer signed off in 2007 after the first Ashes whitewash in 86 years, as Australia wobbled across the next decade and suffered unthinkable defeat to England in three consecutive Ashes series.
The latest stars and stalwarts are rightly celebrated, though they have so far fallen short of establishing the next golden age of Australian cricket. While they have dominated the Ashes on home soil for more than a decade, and last year beat India in the World Test Championship final while also snatching the Cricket World Cup, they have failed to defeat either of their biggest rivals in a red-ball series home or away.
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This summer, with five Tests to be played against India for the first time since 1991-92 and against a similarly creaking opponent, presents a gilt-edge opportunity to reclaim the Border-Gavaskar Trophy for the first time since 2017. But the greater prize of winning the 2027 Ashes in England looks out of reach for many in the current first-choice XI. By then Khawaja will have passed 40, while Nathan Lyon, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Carey and Mitch Marsh will be into the second half of their 30s.
Australia’s most talented cricketers once embarked on their first trials under the intense glare of a Test summer but are now sent off Broadway to white-ball series against national touring teams. The 13-man squad that will face Pakistan in three T20 internationals starting in Brisbane on Thursday includes eight players under the age of 30, but only one – Glenn Maxwell – who has appeared in a Test, even if the last of his seven matches came in 2017.
The younger generation might be most comfortable playing the 20-over format, but as Australia learned when an undermanned side took on a fired-up Pakistan in an ODI series-decider in Perth, the introduction of fresh blood is best achieved gradually and with a guiding light of experience.
