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Let’s be honest – it is very difficult to see Australia winning even one of their four Tests on their upcoming tour of India.
Their 3-0 pounding by an inexperienced Sri Lankan side this past month underlined that their current batting line-up is poorly equipped to counter spin in Asian conditions. If Australia pick a regular team – roughly the same XI they would for a series in home conditions – their chances of success in India will be even slimmer.
I have grappled for some time with the idea of picking “horses for courses” Test XIs. Test line-ups have no trouble doing this in regards to their attack. For example, Sri Lanka’s spinners bowled a whopping 90 per cent of their overs in the third Test against Australia, just months after Sri Lanka used five seamers and only one spinner against England at Leeds.
Meanwhile, pace-heavy sides like England have changed tack and picked an array of spin options for Tests in Asia. Against Pakistan in the UAE last year, the Poms played three spin-bowling all-rounders in Moeen Ali, Adil Rashid and Samit Patel.
It’s seen as fair game to rotate bowlers in and out of Test line-ups based on conditions. Not so for Test batsmen whose positions are far safer, regardless of how well suited they may be to a particular type of pitch.
Take Usman Khawaja for example. The Australian first drop would be one of the first players I would pick for the upcoming three-Test series at home against South Africa and Pakistan. Khawaja is an imperious player of pace bowling in Australian conditions and those two touring sides will lean heavily on their quicks.
Against quality spin, however, Khawaja is horrendous. Early in his career he was tormented by champion English offie Graeme Swann, who dismissed him five times in just four Tests. Against Swann, Khawaja was either rooted to the crease, a veritable sitting duck, or lurching down the pitch in hope.
The same was true in the Tests in Sri Lanka. The left hander’s batting against spin was a complete mess. It’s not just his technique against spin which is a concern, but also his mentality. Khawaja looked flustered and panicked against Swann and, three years on in Sri Lanka, nothing had changed.
Joe Burns, too, seemed like a man with a muddled mind in Sri Lanka. His batting often was at an extreme – Burns fluttered between batten-down-the-hatches and launch-all-torpedoes. Unlike Khawaja, who was exposed as having made no progress against quality spin in the space of three years, Burns’ sample size is small, limited to just those two Tests in Sri Lanka.
Peter Nevill got all three Tests in Sri Lanka to adapt to the conditions. Yet by the third Test in Colombo he appeared as flummoxed as ever by the Sri Lankan tweakers, finishing the series with 51 runs at an average of 8.5.
If Khawaja, Burns and Nevill struggled so badly against spin in Sri Lanka, they surely will flounder in India. The Indian pitches may well favour the slow men more than those in Sri Lanka, which did not turn extravagantly for the most part.
It is hard to imagine how Cameron Bancroft, Marcus Stoinis and Peter Handscomb possibly could do worse. All three of those players have been singled out for praise by domestic coaches for their ability against spin. Former Victoria coach Greg Shipperd has said only Michael Clarke was better against spin than Handscomb of the recent generation of Australian batsmen.
Handscomb has cracked almost 1700 runs at 48 in first-class cricket the past two years, including seven centuries.
Stoinis is renowned in domestic circles as being an assertive and competent player of spin.
After spending time around Stoinis during the ongoing Australia A matches, former Australian batsman David Hussey described the all-rounder as “very good” against tweakers.
Over the past two years, Stoinis has blossomed as a batsman, making 1700 runs at 45 in first-class cricket. He also has excelled for Australia A in the past year, making 252 runs at 50, and taking seven wickets at 26 in his four matches – two against South Africa A at home, and two against India A in Chennai last year.
In the first match in Chennai, Stoinis grinded out 77 from 179 balls against a star-studded India A attack boasting Umesh Yadav, Amit Mishra, Pragyan Ojha and Abhimanyu Mithun, who between them have 251 Test wickets.
It was Bancroft, however, who has the standout in those first-class matches in Chennai. The West Australian opener was comfortably the leading scorer from either side with 224 runs at 75. The pitches in Chennai were absolute dustbowls. They favoured spin so heavily that Australian seamer Gurinder Sandhu switched to bowling off breaks and had success in doing so.
So the competency of Handscomb, Stoinis and Bancroft in such conditions, against two Test-standard spinners, was encouraging. Admittedly, it would be a gamble handing the gloves to Handscomb. In recent seasons he only has kept for Victoria in red ball cricket when Matthew Wade has been unavailable.
But the selectors could give Handscomb plenty of warning they plan to trial him as a keeper in India.
Peter Nevill’s performances on Australian pitches this summer are irrelevant in regards to his suitability for India so why not make an early selection call for India? Handscomb would then have several months to polish his keeping, particularly to the slow bowlers.
As an insurance policy, Australia could bring a backup specialist keeper to India in case Handscomb flounders with the gloves in the first Test. Whatever happens, Australia need to try something different with their top seven in India.
My Test XI for the first against South Africa in Perth
1. David Warner
2. Joe Burns
3. Usman Khawaja
4. Steve Smith
5. Adam Voges
6. Mitch Marsh
7. Peter Nevill
8. Mitchell Starc
9. Josh Hazlewood
10. Nathan Lyon
11. Jackson Bird
My Test XI for the first Test in India
1. David Warner
2. Cameron Bancroft
3. Shaun Marsh
4. Steve Smith
5. Marcus Stoinis
6. Peter Handscomb (WK)
7. Mitch Marsh
8. Steve O’Keefe
9. Mitchell Starc
10. Josh Hazlewood
11. Nathan Lyon