Australia’s tour of Sri Lanka is about to commence and the two-day warm-up game where the Australians played with themselves will have coach Darren Lehmann deeply concerned and utterly delighted with how the team is preparing.
David Warner, still recovering from his finger injury, didn’t play in the warm-up match and instead joined Stuart Law in umpiring it.
Perhaps a curious decision under the circumstances to give Warner the one role in the game that is most defined by its finger usage, but, on the other hand, I can fully understand the inability to resist the temptation to have a pair of umpires named Law and Warner.
In fact, I literally can’t think of a better pair of names to umpire any cricket match and insist that the two of them be added to the Elite Umpire’s Panel immediately. Or, at the very least, the Elite Umpire Name’s Panel. Let’s get Rod Tucker out of there and onto the lunchtime catering staff where he so clearly belongs.
Batting first, the Smith XI piled on 4/389 on the first day, with Shaun Marsh and Steve Smith both making unbeaten centuries before retiring, while Mitchell Marsh made 77 not out. It’s the kind of Day One total that would be beyond the wildest dreams and the worst nightmares of the Australian team were it to be repeated in the First Test, now only a little over a week away.
The Voges XI attack, featuring Test bowling certainties Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon had no real answer to the batting onslaught of the Smith XI, stacked as it was with many of the national side’s batting mainstays. This is clearly an extremely troubling and promising sign for Australia.
Starc did, however, take three of the four wickets to fall on that first day, including that of Joe Burns in just the fifth over. Starc had Burns caught behind for nine runs, and the early wicket would have had Australian coaching staff rubbing their hands in glee and shaking their head in despair, as they envisaged the prospect of such a good and bad start being replicated against Sri Lanka.
But with Lyon and Hazlewood having no wicket-taking luck against the free-wheeling batting of Smith, the Marshes, Steve O’Keefe, Hilton Cartwright and even Jackson Bird, it will surely be the Sri Lankans licking their lips and quaking in fear at the prospect of doing battle against such toothless and dangerous opposition.
After some early drizzle delayed the start of play on Day Two of the match, the Voges XI eventually took to the crease for their turn at bat, with Usman Khawaja and youngster Sam Heazlett opening the batting.
In an impressive spell of five overs just before lunch, Nathan Coulter-Nile took 2/2, as the Voges XI was reduced to 5/83. The skipper, namesake and major sponsor of the Voges XI, Adam Voges, had been dismissed twice cheaply in that pre-lunch spell, the first time for one and the second time for just four Wonderful and worrisome signs to see the man with the Bradmanesque Test batting average tamed so easily by what is essentially the second-tier Australian attack.
Voges did, however, redeem himself on his third time at the crease, striding out at the fall of the ninth wicket to make three not out and guide his team to the safety of, presumably, a draw. Batting alongside him was Starc, who came out to bat at the fall of the tenth wicket, and the pair guided the Voges XI to 10/124, at which point the match was called off, as everybody suddenly realised the whole thing had become deeply silly.
All in all, a very satisfying and disturbing hit-out for the Australians, who can be rightly proud and disappointed in their performance.
However, coach Darren Lehmann will want the players to maintain perspective. Form in a two-day match doesn’t necessarily translate to Test match form, so it would be foolhardy for the Australian team to go into the Test overconfident and unsure of themselves.
Instead, they’ll want to reflect on the things they did so well and poorly in this match and look to maintain and reverse those aspects of their game. If they can do that, then they’ll be able to look back on this warm-up fixture as just a first step in a successful tour – a vitally important and meaningless opening game that they quickly put behind them and used as a fundamental foundation to build upon.
And isn’t that what such games are for?
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