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Will Australia adopt horses-for-courses selection policy in Asia?

15th August, 2016
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Shaun Marsh's performance in the Indian Tests left a lot to be desired. (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
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15th August, 2016
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Shaun Marsh pushed his case for Australia’s Test tour of India early next year with a wonderful century which helped put the tourists in a competitive position in the third Test in Sri Lanka.

In dumping two players with fine Test records, Joe Burns and Usman Khawaja, the Australia selectors may well have signalled they intend to pursue a horses-for-course policy for the four Tests in India.

With his strong Test figures in Asia, Marsh likely would be a beneficiary of such a policy. On a dry Colombo pitch, the elder Marsh brother was calm and organised against spin, in stark contrast to the flighty efforts of many of his teammates in this series. All too often when facing spin in Sri Lanka, the visiting batsmen have looked panicked and bereft of a plan.

Click here for The Roar’s live blog to keep up to date with the Australia versus Sri Lanka Test.

I would wager that a key reason Burns and Khawaja were dropped after only two bad Tests is because neither of them had displayed a clear strategy about how they intended to counter the slow bowlers. They have not been alone in this regard, though.

The Sri Lankan spinners have delighted in connecting the dots, slowly ratcheting up the pressure on the Australian batsmen. The best players of spin all tend to have one piece of advice in common – rotation of the strike is paramount.

Marsh and Smith both had clear plans of how to get down to the non-striker’s end. The left hander used his feet nicely and, crucially, did not come down the wicket looking just to hit boundaries. Regularly he advanced to the tweakers and, having got to the pitch of the ball, drove or nudged them for a single.

Having shown the bowler he was adept at using his feet, Marsh then looked for opportunities to get back deep in his crease. From that position he regularly sliced the ball away square on the offside, or clipped it through the leg side with a straight bat.

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Most noticeably, Marsh never was flustered by the Sri Lankan tweakers. Even when they managed to direct a maiden over at him, or beat his outside edge, it never looked to affect him mentally.

He did not respond with a rash shot or a risky single but instead trusted his technique and strategy and just kept on grinding away.

Although there are six Tests against South Africa and Pakistan to be played before the series in India, Marsh’s fluency against spin in this match may already have helped book him a spot on that tour. At the other end, Smith compiled the kind of mature, neat century which had been expected of him all series.

He also used his feet beautifully, forcing the Sri Lankan spinners to second-guess their lengths. Unlike earlier in the series, Smith didn’t come down the track looking to belt the bowlers, but rather just to get to the pitch of the ball and then play it on its merits.

While Smith endures “home-track bully” taunts far more often than fellow Test batting young guns Joe Root and Kane Williamson, he has a comfortably better record away from home than either cricketer. Smith averages 40-plus with the bat in all eight countries where he has played Test cricket, and averages 55 overall away from home.

To underscore just how impressive those two stats are, neither of them are matched by any of the other batsmen in the top ten of the ICC Test rankings.

It must be said that Australia desperately needed their captain to produce such a ton at Galle or Kandy, rather than in a dead rubber. But the tourists will be able to take heart from the plucky and skilful displays by Smith and Marsh as they look ahead to the biggest challenge in Test cricket – playing India on the road.

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