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The Australian cricket selectors have picked an inevitable team, with all pundits predicting the 12 names. Generally this sort of clarity in a team selection is reassuring. But in this case, it is not.
For, with the exception of Mitchell Johnson and George Bailey, this is the team according to John Inverarity that faced up to England, unsuccessfully, in the fifth Test of the Ashes series in England.
If you were unkind, you could compare the current Australian XI to the survivors of Napoleon’s failed march on Moscow and the painful retreat, in the snow, of the remnants of the Grand Army that had set off with such high hopes on their grand adventure.
The point about the Australian XI for the Brisbane Test next week is that there is a journey-man look to it.
There is only one player, Michael Clarke, who has any pretensions to greatness. And if he bats at number four, which seems to be the intention, his record there reduces him, too, to a status well short of the greatness achieved batting at five.
The argument for shifting Clarke from his favoured and most successful position of number five in the batting order is that by the time he comes in, the Australian innings is generally in danger of collapsing.
As Ian Chappell has frequently argued, you need your best batsman batting as high as possible so that the side gets the benefit of his run-scoring abilities.
In theory, of course, this makes sense. But with a major provision – the ‘best batsman’ can handle the higher batting order as brilliantly as he has the lower position.
One of the beguiling aspects of cricket is that batsmen can perform brilliantly in one position in the order and poorly in another position, even when there is only a one position difference.
Sir Donald Bradman, the greatest batsman of them all, failed when he was promoted to opener.
Yet batting at number three he scored a century before lunch in an Ashes Test when an Australian opener was dismissed first ball.
Batting at number three for Bradman and Australia’s next best in the position, Ricky Ponting, meant they often had to come in early and counter the new ball, with at least one bowler steaming in with a wicket already to his name.
Yet both these champions were able to dominate in this situation.
But as regular openers, it would have been a different matter.
Stephen Waugh is another example of a player who found his natural/best position was lower in the batting order, number five in fact, than his supporters reckoned he should be batting in.
An enthusiastic Bill O’Reilly declared after a swashbuckling knock by Waugh early in his career the youngster should bat for Australia at number three
But it was at number five that Waugh, like Allan Border and Michael Clarke, really established his sensational career as a batsman and a captain.
So I am suggesting for Australia to have any chance of winning back the Ashes, Clarke needs to bat at five, the position in which he has played his greatest match-winning innings.
Who bats at four?
It has to be George Bailey who, from the team announcement, is selected to come at number six.
There has been some talk of Steve Smith going up in the batting order but, to my mind, he has technical deficiencies that could be savagely exposed if he bats too high in the order.
Smith has the making of a natural six. He goes for the bowling and is unorthodox in his hitting. Batting at this position, too, allows him to put in the work to improve his leg-spin bowling.
He could/should be the batting all-rounder that the balance of the Australian XI needs, as Shane Watson continues to break down after virtually every series of matches he plays.
So my batting order is: Chris Rogers and David Warner opening. Shane Watson at number three, followed by George Bailey, Michael Clarke, Steven Smith and Brad Haddin.
On paper this looks like a handy line-up that can score quickly enough to give the bowlers the time to take their 20 wickets.
Whether they score enough runs, though, is another matter.
They seem more relaxed with Darren Lehman as the coach. And aside from Rogers, a necessary sticker at one end, the other designated batsmen score their runs quite quickly.
Hopefully, they will score quickly and abundantly.
For this Australian attack, without the match-winners in Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, needs plenty of time and some friendly pitches to get through an England batting line-up that is noted for its tenacity in holding out in the fourth innings to force a draw.
Ryan Harris is a lethal threat, especially with the bounce he gets in Australia.
But Peter Siddle is really the third seamer, the container rather than the destroyer or potential destroyer who Harris needs to back up his attacks.
Enter Mitchell Johnson. He has to be the shock bowler taking wickets with short, ferocious spells at the bowling crease.
If he does this, then Australia has a great chance of winning back the Ashes.
If his head becomes mixed up with theories and fears and he starts to spray deliveries all over the place, as he has in the past, he is finished and probably the chances of winning back the Ashes are in jeopardy, as well.
No one can predict how well or poorly Johnson will bowl. In the past, he has been a moveable feast (on too many occasions for the batsmen) from one innings to another, and sometimes from one over to another.
But this is his last chance to fulfill the predictions made about him by his mentor Dennis Lillee.
What he has going for him is that he has taken 200 Test wickets and his bowling on occasions has been impossible for even the best of batsmen to counter.
If everything was predictable in sport, we wouldn’t be interested particularly in following it. It is the ‘glorious unpredictability’ of cricket that provides its magic.
This is why Kerry Packer was so insistent on broadcasting sport live.
The Ashes series in the past have been won, though, by the side that has enough players who impose their own successful predictability – either with the bat scoring massively or the ball taking bags of wickets throughout the series.
The three Australians who can best do this are Clarke (batting at five) and Harris and Johnson with their thunderbolts.
Brisbane will reveal whether this is all a pious hope…