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Shaun Marsh is under pressure to score runs. Instead of the glorious first Australian summer he would have hoped for, he has accrued 14 runs in three Test matches, and many are questioning his ability to play on wickets which offer the bowler interest.
Australia has plenty of top order batsmen on the fringes of the side if things go awry. Ordinarily if Marsh continued to falter and another player was in form, the change would likely be made.
But none of them are in form. None of them are playing first-class cricket.
Thanks to the all-conquering, fan-pleasing circus which Cricket Australia calls the Big Bash League, not a single Australian player outside the Test side is playing first-class cricket.
This, in a summer in which Australia’s far from settled side was challenging (or at least it was supposed to be a challenge)the world’s second best Test playing nation.
Usman Khawaja was dropped for Shaun Marsh. Khawaja did not score enough runs to seize his opportunity, whereas had so firmly seized his in Sri Lanka. The selectors had no other option.
From first Test, where he showed poise and assurance against rampant English bowlers in Sydney, Khawaja gradually lost form, and seemed to lose confidence.
His innings were increasingly timid; many will point to his seven from 50-odd deliveries on the first morning in Hobart as evidence of this frailty. Simply, Khawaja needs to go back and play first-class cricket.
But he cannot. Instead, he is asked to walk out to the middle of Sydney Olympic Park and embrace agricultural strokeplay. Instead of refining small flaws which Test cricket exposed in his technique, he is asked to forget about technique altogether.
Khawaja’s style, mentality and approach are all crafted to Test cricket. He has the quality for it too, we should not doubt it. But he is still raw, and he has still not quite worked out his game.
The Sheffield Shield is the place to do it. It’s the place Michael Hussey spent ten years toiling and refining and improving, so that by the time he was finally chosen for his first Test cap, his all round game had reach aldente. One wonders how Hussey’s career would have turned out if he had played his first Test at 20, rather than 30.
Darren Lehmann is another example, so too is Damien Martyn who, like Khawaja was dropped after debuting before he was ready and had to work his way back with consistent first-class runs.
Simon Katich, so unfashionable and frequently the sacrifice, was able to bash (not Big Bash) the door to the Australia team down with a prolific and lengthy series of first-class performances.
The Sheffield Shield has so often been Australia’s secret weapon in this way, as quality cricketers hone their craft against others of equally high ability.
Phil Hughes needs it too, but instead he’s playing Grade cricket and waiting for sanity to be restored.
I just cannot escape the suspicion that these players who seek to force their way into the team and not getting the opportunity to do so. It has often been said in the past that it is hard to get in the Australian team, but impossible to get out once you’re there.
Where once that was the case because of the remarkable quality of the side, now it has developed because the Test eleven are the only cricketers in Australia playing in a format or a standard which remotely approaches the five-day pinnacle.
Surely, for players like Khawaja and Hughes who wanted to re-emerge before the summer was out, this two month red-ball hiatus must feel like wasted time. They must be frustrated.
For the fans, it is baffling. Cricket Australia pledges itself to improving the Test team with the creation of the Argus review, then handicaps it so severely by turning off the tap of first class form for two crucial months of the season.
It either shows a calamitous lack of common sense at the game’s headquarters, or reflects an invasion of corporate interests ahead of sporting, which is more total than we imagined.
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