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What if Shaun Marsh does well in Hobart?

7th December, 2015
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Shaun Marsh scored 180 but may lose his spot. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
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7th December, 2015
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It was a good time catching up with the guys and girls behind The Roar last week in Sydney, and chewing the fat with a few old faces alongside new colleagues.

One of them was Tim Prentice, who I’d not met before. In a chat on numerous topics the conversation got around to columns we’d written that we were really happy about, or that were among our favourites.

Tim told me about his grand final week ‘interview’ with Johnathan Thurston’s headgear – which he wrote instead of every other NRL grand final preview for the week – and I mentioned my pre-2013-2014 Ashes column wondering what we might do if Mitchell Johnson actually bowled well.

Of course, it’s now history that both pieces proved to be rather prescient. Johnson did indeed bowl rather well in that series two seasons back, and Thurston’s headgear did indeed stay on his head. In fact, it soaked up blood from an at-the-time mysterious post-match celebratory head gash.

Over the weekend, the motivation behind my Johnson pondering at the time remained with me, a reminder that perhaps it’s time to ask the question again of another much-maligned player.

Like Johnson this time two summers ago, the expectations around Shaun Marsh’s ability to produce consistent Test-quality innings aren’t high.

His farcical first innings run out in Adelaide, for just two, only seemed to reinforce the popular perception, while his second innings 49 is an interesting one to judge. For every opinion willing to class it as a match-winning knock crucial in Australia’s chase to win the pink ball Test, there is another one only too happy to highlight a continued inability to go on with starts.

Aesthetically, there can be no doubt that Marsh during his second dig had heeded the lessons from the first three innings of the Adelaide Test. His hands were soft, his leaving was very good, and he looked to be deliberately trying to play each delivery as late as possible. Given his past propensity to nick off to the slip cordon pushing forward with hard hands, this was a welcome technical adjustment.

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All the while, the man who Marsh replaced was beavering away in the background to ensure he’ll be right for a return on Boxing Day.

Usman Khawaja was first spotted back in training during the Adelaide Test, has been back in the nets for a fortnight apparently, and told News Limited this week that he felt like he was on track to be fit for Melbourne.

That in itself will be interesting, though, because the Big Bash League will be Khawaja’s only avenue of return. Not that that worries him, though, making the very valid point that, “It’s not so much the lower intensity stuff that’s going to get a hammy, it’s the higher intensity stuff – so actually pushing it in the BBL will probably be a bit harder in some respects.

“It’s a bit more of a test than it would be coming back in the four-day game in some respects.”

Khawaja’s Sydney Thunder team plays the opening game of the BBL – a Sydney derby with the Sixers – on Thursday, December 17, and then plays the Melbourne Stars at the MCG on Sunday, December 20, and you would think a Boxing Day Test squad would probably be named after that match. And if Khawaja’s already going to be in Melbourne…

But what if Marsh does well in Hobart? And what would even be the pass mark for him?

Coming off that second innings 49 in Adelaide, I would imagine Marsh would need to better that in Hobart at least once, and might even need to top a hundred runs for the Test in total. And there could be a challenge in that; on current evidence, you wouldn’t expect Australia to need a very large second innings score against this West Indies side.

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So if Australia only bat once and Marsh makes a solid, fluent 75, he’ll do his case no harm at all. If Australia bat just once and he doesn’t break 50, he could just as easily be in trouble.

But it goes beyond that. If Australia did have to bat twice and Marsh made a pair of 30s, then we’ll have the ‘he can’t go on from a start’ discussion. If he makes a solid 75 and then backs it up with a low score, it’ll be ‘he still can’t score consistently’. Two single-figure scores will make the selectors’ job very easy indeed, and at 32, that could well close the book on SE Marsh, Test player.

In some respects, a couple of scores either side of 50, and with the second one unbeaten in a comfortable Australian win, could make things very interesting for Melbourne. I mean, think about that; if Marsh followed his 49 in Adelaide with 55 and 45* in a Hobart win, then the only way Marsh could really be dropped is if he’s still the lowest scoring Australian batsman for the Test. And he’d be pretty hard done by!

So I ask it again, what happens if Shaun Marsh does well in Hobart? And more importantly, are we prepared to put aside preconceptions and judgements and accept that he could indeed do well?

Just as I wrote of Johnson back in late 2013, the same applies to Marsh now. His stats are there for all to see, but only paint the picture of past performance; they’re not an ironclad crystal ball into the future.

And just of the Johnson possibility two summers ago, Marsh is just as likely to bat well in Hobart as he is to bat as poorly as many expect.

But how many of us are ready, or willing, for Marsh to hold his spot going forward?

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