And so, the 12-month game of musical chairs continues.
After three matches in the national set-up, Nathan McSweeney has been axed from the Test side ahead of the Boxing Day clash at the MCG, ending another failed opening experiment.
Despite having never opened the batting at state level, McSweeney was entrusted with the thankless task of taming Jasprit Bumrah and the swinging Kookaburra, perhaps the most challenging introduction to Test cricket in the modern era.
It proved a one-sided contest, with the Indian seamer dismissing him four times at an average of 3.75. Lamb to the slaughter.
“I look at McSweeney and think I don’t think there’s a player who has had a harder start to their career,” former England captain Michael Vaughan told Fox Cricket this week.
“The conditions that he’s had to face as an opener and the bowlers that he’s facing, there’s not many tougher starts to a Test career.”
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New South Wales teenager Sam Konstas has been added to the Australian squad for the final two Tests, and he looms as the leading candidate to replace McSweeney at the top of the order. If the 19-year-old makes his debut in front of 90,000 spectators at the MCG next week, he’ll become Australia’s youngest Test opener in history.
However, Tasmanian all-rounder Beau Webster and West Australian wicketkeeper Josh Inglis also feature in the Test squad, with the potential of slotting one of them in the middle order and opening with the under-fire Marnus Labuschagne.
David Warner must find this all very amusing. It’s been 18 months since he announced the New Year’s Test against Pakistan would be his last, yet national selectors still haven’t found a long-term replacement. His half-hearted offer of coming out of retirement now seems slightly less far-fetched.
Following the veteran opener’s retirement, Steve Smith stepped into the role for this year’s Frank Worrell Trophy and Trans-Tasman Trophy, but abandoned the heavily-debated move following a string of low scores in New Zealand.
After weeks of conjecture on Smith’s replacement ahead of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, national selectors committed to their philosophy of picking the country’s six best batters, ignoring specialist openers Marcus Harris and Cameron Bancroft in favour of McSweeney.
Another new face will occupy the cursed position in Melbourne this week, while Travis Head is expected to open the batting in Sri Lanka next month. The revolving door might continue spinning until next summer’s Ashes series.
Australia set to drop McSweeney | 04:31
Dropping McSweeney was a gutsy call, and it could prove the correct one. Konstas has been in blistering form of late, clobbering a century against India during the Prime Minister’s XI match in Canberra and slapping a rapid fifty in the Sydney Thunder’s Big Bash League season opener.
However, chief selector George Bailey stopped short of admitting the decision to reinvent McSweeney as an opener was a mistake.
“It’s a tough, tough call. A really hard decision … one we spent a lot of time deliberating over, particularly after a small sample size of three Tests,” Bailey told reporters on Friday.
“Nathan was disappointed. The message to him was much the same as at the start of the series. We believe he’s got the ability and temperament to succeed at Test level but the way the series has played out, we just want the option of throwing something different at India for this next Test.
“It hasn’t quite worked out as you’d like it to … but it’s still very much the start of his career.”
Australia has an unfortunate history of bottled attempts at shoehorning middle-order batters as openers for the sake of team balance.
Following the Cape Town ball-tampering saga, national selectors replaced the banned Warner with one-day captain Aaron Finch, who had spent most of his Sheffield Shield career down at No. 5. Three matches into the 2018/19 summer, Finch was axed from the Test side after being outclassed by India’s pace attack.
Two years later, Matthew Wade was elevated to opener to fill a vacancy left by an injured Warner for the 2020/21 Border-Gavaskar Trophy, but the Tasmanian struggled in the unfamiliar role, dropped at the end of the Test series never to return.
Time and time again, Australia has tried replacing Warner with a middle-order specialist – and the ploy has backfired on every occasion.
McSweeney confident ahead of 4th Test | 01:55
McSweeney, who notched 72 runs at 14.40 against India, has become the scapegoat for Australia’s vulnerable top order. Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne have also struggled this summer, averaging 12.60 and 16.40 respectively, but the duo has credits in the bank after helping Australia win the World Test Championship mace last year.
Had this summer been of less significance or against a weaker opponent, McSweeney would have been given more time to find his feet. But the series is locked at 1-1 with two matches remaining, and India is one victory away from retaining the coveted Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
“You can say the way our top three have been playing has been reasonably similar and we’d like the ability to throw something different at India on the back of that,” Bailey continued.
“If you look more broadly, I don’t think necessarily the top six has quite functioned to the level that we need in this series as a whole.
“We think they provide a different look and a different make-up of the eleven come Boxing Day.”
Spicier decks and the altered Kookaburra have made batting in Australia difficult for top-order batters over the past few years – Smith recently described it as the “perfect storm”. Averages have plummeted, and while 450 was previously considered a decent first-innings team total, 350 is now deemed a par score.
However, Indian opener KL Rahul has mustered two fifties in the series to date, while rising star Yashasvi Jaiswal smacked a century at Perth Stadium. The tourists have fared better on Australia’s bouncy wickets than the players who grew up in these conditions.
Bailey declared he expected more from Australia’s top order over the coming weeks – especially veteran opener Khawaja.
“You’re always looking for your senior players to be the leaders in how you play,” Bailey said.
“We value the left-hand (option) at the top of the order. There wasn’t a great deal of consideration to moving him. (Marnus Labuschagne) has been on record saying he’d like to be scoring more runs. We’d love him to be scoring more runs.”
The fourth Test between Australia and India gets underway at the MCG on Thursday, with the first ball scheduled for 10.30am AEDT.
