Before Christmas has even hit, there is more anticipation about Boxing Day than usual, in more ways than one. Australia and India sit at 1-1 with two Tests to play, the first at the MCG where India won on their last two tours. The ticketing forecast says it will be a full house, the weather forecast says it will hit 40C, and while the latter may suppress the former, it’s the first time that all tickets have been claimed since the Ashes match of 2013. Amidst all this stands a Test debut opening the batting for a 19-year-old, with Sam Konstas’ spot in the XI confirmed on Tuesday by Australia coach Andrew McDonald.
Older generations will remember Doug Walters debuting at 19, and some would remember Neil Harvey doing the same. There have been a few modern bolters at young ages, like Ashton Agar or Matthew Renshaw, and Konstas will have the benefit of a captain in Pat Cummins who debuted at 18. In terms of substantial modern batting careers, though, Konstas most brings to mind Phillip Hughes, who was playing Sheffield Shield cricket by 18, and Ricky Ponting who did the same at 17. Both were in the Test team by 20.
Konstas has not had the years of building up his name, instead leaping to prominence this season with a few big innings in a domestic batting scene that currently underwhelms. But the prodigy talk about him in those last couple of months has echoes of the other two, an echo that Konstas started off with twin centuries against South Australia. Ponting was the youngest to make twin Shield tons when he was 18, Hughes the youngest to do it in Tests. Ponting spoke about the similarities and differences in Melbourne on Sunday night at an event with The Final Word podcast, saying that his brief dealings with Konstas had shown a self-confidence and swagger that Ponting at the same age did not have.
“The kid’s got some game and he’s got a bit about him, so let’s hope he does debut now,” Ponting said. “Before they picked the Test team, I got put on the spot and said go ahead and pick him in a radio interview. And I finished the interview and thought, ‘He hasn’t played a single game in Perth, hasn’t played a Shield game in Brisbane, hasn’t played a pink ball game yet, and here I am pushing him out in to open the batting in those venues against Bumrah.’ So I retracted that about two weeks later and said ‘You’d better pick McSweeney, I reckon.’”
Australia’s selectors did pick Nathan McSweeney at first, and he spared Konstas those three tough assignments and set him up to play in Melbourne and Sydney. If we can be frank in the week of Christmas dinner, the South Australian captain was handed a shit sandwich: asked to bat out of position, at the top of the order, against one of the best fast bowlers in history, who has been on a tear every time he’s taken the ball – in effectively five bowling innings this series, Jasprit Bumrah has 21 wickets at 10.
Selection chair George Bailey defended the experiment by saying that it doesn’t matter where players bat in the order, a proposition that rather comes across as absurd after tens of thousands of first-class matches have involved the use of specialist openers. The job needs a particular set of skills, if a player like Bumrah is not to become a nightmare.
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Now in his third tour of Australia, Bumrah has taken 53 wickets on these shores at a cost of 17.15 runs apiece, with a wicket every 41 balls. In 148 years of Test cricket in this country, no visitor with as many wickets has taken them so cheaply or so frequently.
To find anyone even in his vicinity you have to go back to the uncovered tracks of the 1880s: Billy Bates took 50 wickets at 16.42, Billy Barnes took 33 at 15.42 and George Lohmann took 41 at 11.65. And still none had as low a strike rate. Incredibly, even if you remove all qualifying criteria to filter out anomalies, Bumrah is still 19th on the best visiting averages, mostly behind bowlers who played one or two matches, or part-timers who bowled as few as three overs.
This is what the new kid will be up against, potentially taking strike on morning one in front of 90,000 people with the thermometers already pushing through the 30s. Whatever swagger he might have will surely be tested out. Still, if you think he’s going to sweat, bring your mind back to Ponting and consider this: a Konstas debut would be the first time an Australian side has fielded a player born after losing the 2005 Ashes. Digest that with your leftovers. In a world that always moves on, and an Australian team soon to move with it, this is a seismic roll of the wheel.
