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I can’t believe I’m having these thoughts. Even worse, I can’t believe I’m admitting to them publicly. But I think I want the Big Show, Glenn Maxwell in the Test team.
I have led the chorus railing against him. I have claimed he is the poster child of the damage T20 has done to the traditional form of the game. The embodiment of the batsman that doesn’t put a price on his wicket, the man who doesn’t have the patience to build an innings.
A few shots for the highlight reel while making 35 off 20 balls before surrendering his wicket to an unnecessarily flamboyant shot. Self indulgence personified.
I have shaken my head in dismay at the size of his IPL contracts and then he went and left that ball that clean bowled him in the Big Bash last year. Case closed for me.
But then I went to the ODI World Cup match at the WACA earlier this year and I swear I saw him reverse sweep a fast bowler for six. I had to watch the replay to make sure it happened. OK, it was against the might of Afghanistan on the fast and bouncy WACA pitch, but how many batsmen do you think are capable of doing that?
With great reluctance I had to concede he’s got talent; maybe even a fair bit of it.
Now we are looking at a revamp of our Test batting line-up and the candidates look uninspiring. As Glenn Mitchell rightly pointed out in his recent article ‘What has happened to Australia’s batsmen?’ we’re faced with choosing from guys that have first class averages in the high 30s to a tick over 40.
Only Chris Lynn has an average above 45 (just). With the exception of Cameron Bancroft, none of the contenders are spring chickens – they’ve all got several years of Shield cricket under their belt.
That suggests to me those averages are a decent pointer to how good these batsmen actually are. To play Test cricket, they’re going to leave Australian shores and play on Indian dust bowls turning square, face English swinging and seaming Duke balls and take on Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel steaming in from either end at Newlands. Are they going to jump up to Test cricket and start averaging 45-50? That seems like a stretch to me.
So where is the next Test batsman that’s going to score 5000-plus runs at an average of 45-50 going to come from? We’ve produced such a steady stream of these players over the years: Greg Chappell, Allan Border, Steve Waugh, Matthew Hayden, Adam Gilchrist, Michael Clarke and Ricky Ponting.
Steve Smith and David Warner are heading that way too, so are we being greedy wanting more? Hell, the English haven’t produced a single batsman since WWII with a decent tally of runs and a Test average over 50. Maybe that’s just how it’s going to be for us now.
Or maybe not. I’m starting to think the elite will show their talent in another way in the early stages of their career in this era of T20 dominated cricket. With the money available in the IPL, it would be hard not to spend just a bit of time practising your ramp shots and lofted reverse sweeps. Maybe the talent just needs to be carefully harnessed to get the very best out of them for the Test arena.
So, back to my earlier comments about the Big Show. His first class batting average of 40 sits right with the supposed best our Shield comp has to offer – the numbers say he’s no worse than the next best out there. And I reckon few would argue that he has freakish hand-eye coordination and natural ability that commands your attention.
Would it be that hard to reel him in a couple of notches and settle him into Test cricket? He’s shown in the ODI team that he can handle big time international cricket. From all accounts his recent run a ball 140 for Yorkshire was a classy innings compiled against a quality attack. He came in at 4-73 which quickly became 5-79 and he had to settle in before accelerating his scoring.
Maybe a bit of maturity is finding its way into his game, after all he’s nearly 27 now. It wasn’t that long ago when we all thought David Warner was a T20 slogger who had no place in the Test team. Now he has a very healthy Test average of 46 at a still highly respectable strike rate of 75. I don’t see any reason Maxwell can’t do the same.
It seems a lot more plausible to me than Usman Khawaja or Joe Burns improving their performances by adding a significant degree of difficulty and stepping up to Test cricket. Maybe they’ll be serviceable players for a while with an average in the 30s but is that what we’re looking for?
I say pick Maxwell in the Test team to bat at five and tell him he won’t be dropped for a year no matter what. What have we got to lose? Remember you also get a useful back-up spinner and gun fielder. Get someone like Gilly to mentor him for that year to keep the attacking flair in his game but shave off the reckless edge.
So I’ve come full circle and found myself a card carrying member of the Big Show’s fan club. In the immortal words of Rocky Balboa after he took down Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, “If I can change, and you can change, we all can change!”
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