With the summer of cricket rapidly approaching, attention has turned to team selection as Australia look to beat South Africa in a series on home soil for the first time since 2006.
While the core of the side seems set, several positions, including David Warner’s opening partner and the number three spot, are up for the taking.
Joe Burns and Usman Khawaja were the incumbents heading into the Sri Lankan tour, but a weak first two Tests saw both of them dropped, with Shaun Marsh and Moises Henriques coming in. While Henriques offered little, Marsh was tremendously impressive, scoring 130 in the first innings, with only his brother Mitchell and captain Steve Smith producing more than 25 runs during that innings.
Incredibly, and despite a brilliant 182 in his last Test innings in Australia against the West Indies, Marsh’s spot is in jeopardy for the first Test. If he is to be dropped, it certainly won’t have anything to do with fitness concerns after Marsh crafted a dogged 73 on the opening day of the Sheffield Shield.
Somehow, there is the very real possibility that Burns and Khawaja will both make the squad at Marsh’s expense, and if that does happen, I will explode.
It’s not that Marsh has scored two centuries in his past two Tests or that he was one of the only players who offered resistance to spin bowling in Sri Lanka, it’s because he is the incumbent and he has done nothing to play himself out of the position.
To me, that should be enough to see him given the first crack against the South Africans.
Marsh has had an interesting career to date. He made a century on debut batting at number three, long thought of as the domain of the side’s best batsman. A nightmarish summer against India in 2011/12, which yielded just 17 runs in six innings at an average below three, saw him put on the shelf for more than two years.
When Marsh was included for the third Test against New Zealand in late 2015, I was one of the many shaking my head at his inclusion. Here was a guy who had been given every chance to make it at the top level and who hadn’t ever been able to repay the faith.
Why should players like Alex Doolan, George Bailey, Brad Hodge and Rob Quiney be permanently exiled from the Test team after limited opportunities, only for the Shaun Marshes of the world to receive infinite chances at making it?
But this time, Marsh took his chance with both hands. A nightmarish run out in the first innings appeared to validate the doubters, but an outstanding 49 on a difficult day-night wicket during the second innings against a fired up New Zeland bowling attack was the best innings I had seen him play.
While he went on to rack up a massive 182 against the West Indies in Hobart in the very next Test, his Adelaide innings was not only his best but one of the best innings by an Australian all summer.
Khawaja and Burns scored truckloads of runs that summer but the pitches they scored them on were as flat as a road. In five of the six Tests Australia played that summer, the team exceeded 500 runs in the first innings. In the Adelaide Test when the ball was genuinely moving, and batting conditions were as difficult as we’ve seen in Australia for quite some time, Burns could only muster 14 and 11.
Khawaja didn’t play in that Test, but under similar pressure in Sri Lanka, with the team under the pump, he was all at sea. His first-ball duck in the second Test, with the team 2/10 chasing 413, was symbolic of the batsman I believe he is; he shouldered arms, underestimating the spin, only to have the ball cannon into his stumps.
Burns scored 34 runs in that Sri Lanka series and 25 more in Adelaide. Khawaja managed 55. That’s ten innings between them, with a combined total of 114 runs. That’s in the Test conditions that have been the most difficult for batsmen over that period. And Marsh outscored them all in one innings on another dicey pitch in the third Test.
I’m not saying Burns and Khawaja’s flat-track performances are entirely irrelevant. Indeed, one of them should play in the first Test, and I hope that man will be Khawaja.
But if both players are chosen ahead of Shaun Marsh, the man who has performed exceptionally on the most difficult pitches Australia has faced over the last year, then you guessed it, I will explode.
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