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You can’t blame Phillip Hughes for the pickle Australia now find themselves in. The real mistake was made at the selection table before the team left home.
Bravo for putting their faith in the little bloke from Macksville in the first place, but to choose just six specialist batsmen for a five-Test Ashes tour is the sort of decision Sir Humphrey Appleby might describe as “courageous, Prime Minister”.
Conventional wisdom has always been that you take a spare opener. If a batsman loses form or gets injured, he’s ready and waiting.
No matter if it’s a lower order batsman who falls by the wayside. Specialist openers can drop down the order far more readily than the other way round.
So if Twitter can be believed, it looks like Australia will be going into a must-win Test with an opening batsman who has never made the grade as a Test all-rounder.
Shane Watson has played eight Tests in four-and-a-half years. His scores have been 31, 24, 10, 16, 2, 41, 78, 2, 36, 2, 9, 1, 5. He has never been in higher than No.6.
Ashes openers are supposed to be blokes like Ponsford, Woodfull, Morris, Simpson, Lawry, Taylor, Hayden and Langer. And the way he is going, you can just about add Katich to that list.
It is hard to see how the injury-prone Watson (whose attempts to open for Queensland failed dismally) can be preferred to Hughes, who scored a century in each innings in Durban just four Tests previously.
Hughes’s technique against short-pitched bowling has undoubtedly been exposed, but he is only 20, and at that age anything can happen.
Now that he has been dropped, it’s hard to see him forcing his way back into the side for the final two Tests, which robs the series of some of its romantic appeal.
Ricky Ponting and the selectors are apparently willing to give the badly out-of-form Mitchell Johnson another chance when Stuart Clark is wound up and ready to go.
Like Clark, Phillip Hughes is entitled to feel hard done by. Let’s hope he sorts out his problems quickly and comes back better than ever.
PHILLIP HUGHES
Age: 20
Born: November 30, 1988, Macksville, NSWTEST CAREER
Mat Runs HS Ave 100
5 472 160 52.44 2FIRST CLASS
Mat Runs HS Ave 100
28 2786 198 61.91 10
Test debut: South Africa v Australia at Johannesburg, Feb 26-Mar 2, 2009
First-class debut: New South Wales v Tasmania at Sydney, Nov 20-23, 2007
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