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Since Rod Marsh’s shock resignation, the new-look selection panel of Trevor Hohns (acting chair), Greg Chappell (interim selector), Mark Waugh and Darren Lehmann has turned a side thumped in five successive Tests into on that has won three on the trot.
By any standard that’s impressive, as the panel looked to youth.
They chose the pick-and-stick policy for the three wins, until Australian bowling coach David Saker made an impassioned plea for a genuine all-rounder to bat six and relieve the four-prong attack of some pressure.
Selectors came up with Hilton Cartwright – a batsman who bowls.
His batting stats are passable after five Sheffield Shield games for Western Australia this summer, with 330 runs at 37.
But Australian captain Steve Smith won’t be rushing the 24-year-old medium pacer into the Test attack, with Shield stats of four wickets in five games at 74.75 apiece, with an economy rate of 4.90 and a strike rate of 91.5.
Cartwright will replace Nic Maddinson, who made only 27 runs in four visits during those three successive victories.
But the one to suffer will be Jackson Bird, who has been a rock-solid supporter of Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood in the same period.
Bird took 13 wickets at 31 compared to Starc’s 18 at 27.83, and Hazlewood’s 14 at 22.78.
But left-arm spinner Steve O’Keefe replaces Bird today, and with Cartwright no certainty to pull his weight, the Australian attack will still be four-prong, with the different dynamic of two quicks and two spinners.
The selectors could have gone with Travis Head for the sixth batting berth.
He’s averaging 60.33 with the willow in this summer’s Shield, with a century and two half-centuries, and his offies have taken seven wickets at 35 with an economy rate of 4.93, and a strike rate of 42.5 – far better all-round than Cartwright.
Bird could have been retained, with Head combining with Nathan Lyon for a genuine five-prong attack.
But the selectors are on a roll of three, and if Cartwright fires with the ball against the odds, a roll of four will give the Australians a morale-boosting start to the far more demanding four-Test tour of India next month.
So the jury is out, and if Mother Nature doesn’t interfere too much, it will be fascinating to watch this match unfold.