The Australian selectors have, finally, got their selections right. Right now is probably not the time to have a look at the long-term credentials of Brad Haddin as the successor to Adam Gilchrist, but it is the right time to bring in the prodigy Phillip Hughes, the talented Marcus North and the Victorian leg-spinner Bryce McGain.
McGain is in his middle 30s, rather old for a Test debut. He is not a ripping spinner like Shane Warne. He is a neat, reasonably accurate leg-spinner, rather like ‘Dutchie’ Holland, the oldish and successful leg-spinner from Newcastle who he resembles in method, temperament and looks (without the moustache).
I expect McGain to come into the Test side in place of Nathan Hauritz.
He will be far more effective than Hauritz on wearing fifth-day pitches. He is tight enough, as well, to provide Ricky Ponting with a slow-bowling stopper, as a variation to the quicks, in the first bowling innings of a Test.
Australian teams are always more effective and more Australian when the team’s spin bowler is a wrist spinner. Ashley Mallett and Jack Iverson provide an exception to this general rule. But these two bowlers were, in their different ways (Iverson was a flick-finger bowler), great bowlers, an accusation that can never be lumped on Hauritz.
Some of the initial commentary has expressed surprise that Marcus North, a left-hand batsman and right-handed off-spinner, has won selection.
North’s worth was touted some months ago by Ian Chappell, a very good judge of a cricketer. With McGain in the side, I’d expect the selectors opt for North as the batting all-rounder at number 6.
The other possibility, Andrew McDonald, is more of a journeyman player, with his slow-medium incutters and limited batting skills.
My view about all-rounders is that this player should be good enough in one of the disciplines (batting or bowling) to be in the side. Of course, it is a bonus if, like Andrew Flintoff, Ian Botham, Jacques Kallis, Gary Sobers or, going back much further, everyone’s favourite player, Keith Miller, the all-rounder could be played merely as a batsman or a bowler.
I dislike the ‘bits and pieces’ selections, players who are quite good but not of Test standard at either bowling or batting. England tends to go for these players, the Ashley Giles syndrome. And it hasn’t really worked for them over the decades.
McDonald, to me, seems to be an Ashley Giles type of player. North, at least, has some quality about his batting, and his off-spinning bowling is on a par with that of Hauritz.
Finally, but not least, we come to Phillip Hughes.
Readers of The Roar will know that about 18 months ago, I wrote a piece about Hughes playing his first first-class innings for NSW against Tasmania at the SCG. I made the fearless prediction that a prodigy had arrived just when Australian cricket needed some young and highly-talented blood in the Test XI.
In an interesting article in the Sun-Herald a month or so, David Sygall pointed out that in all grades and forms of cricket, Hughes has scored over 50 centuries. This confirms my initial impression of him that he is a run machine.
He has worked out at a very young age (he is younger than Ponting was when he came into the Test side in 1995), a method that allows him to score runs in every form of the game.
He can’t be claimed to be a great batsman yet, of course, but what he shares with the undoubted masters like Don Bradman, Sachin Tendulkar and Ponting is that he is very short, has great strength, concentration and terrific hand-eye coordination.
Hughes spent most of his childhood hitting a ball in a sock which was reinforced by hours and hours facing up to a bowling machine which was patiently fed by his father.
He plays back a lot, like most great batsman.
He is not an attractive batsman to watch, being rather muscular in his method. He has very strong thighs that enable him to get very low to cut any ball on or just wide of the off-stump. Later in his innings, he can go on to the front foot and smack the ball over mid-off and mid-on.
Many are called, of course, but few are chosen. Hughes is a chosen one because he combines a gritty, combative, utilitarian style with the toughness of a Mallee root, which can’t be prised out of the ground, and a dedication to the task of scoring runs that would have gained him sainthood in the Middle Ages if batting was the substitute for being a scribe and illustrator.
In cricket, as in boxing, the really deadly sport, temperament is everything. Hughes has shown in his short career that his temperament is first-class plus.
In that first first-class innings, for instance, against a strong attack that was led by Ben Hilfenhaus, he batted without agitation or apparent nervousness for 40 minutes before scoring some runs.
In the Sheffield Shield final he scored a century for NSW to ensure a victory. Last weekend in his batting test with Phil Jacques he scored a big century and 82 not out.
These are signs of a run-scoring prodigy.
The genius and strength of Australian cricket is that most in decades the game here throws up a prodigy, generally a batsman but sometimes a bowler.
It’s exciting that we’ve got a decade now to watch Hughes prosper for the Baggy Green Caps just when the last batting prodigy, Ponting, is playing out the last couple of years of the finest batting career in Australian cricket after the immortal Bradman.
Bring on Dale Steyn.
What a test for a young opener to confront. And what a thrill to watch the beginning of what should be one of those mighty batting-bowling battles that have graced the history of Test cricket.
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