Australian cricket selectors Rod Marsh, Darren Lehmann, Mark Waugh and Trevor Hohns continue to disappoint cricket lovers across Australia. They have regularly defied logic by selecting and dropping players willy nilly.
Shaun Marsh and Peter Siddle will miss the second Test against South Africa due to injury, and Adam Voges is in doubt with a hamstring injury. Voges’ injury is a blessing in disguise, and I’m hoping the Western Australian ‘flat track bully’ won’t return to the Test side!
The future of the Test side isn’t in the hands of older players like Voges. We need to blood some youngsters and plan for the future rather than patching up a leaky test side full of holes. The selectors must play an upcoming young batsman at six. It’s the perfect way to unearth the next Ricky Ponting.
Callum Ferguson has been named in the Test squad for the second Test match starting on Saturday in Hobart. The 31-year-old is uncapped at Test level but has 30 one-day internationals to his name.
Ferguson posted a century in the opening round of the current Shield season, a duck in the second round and averaged 61 in this year’s Matador Cup.
In the 2015-16 summer, he was restricted to just five matches but averaged 53.11, and averaged 52.25 in 2014-15 and 56.50 in the 2013-14 Shield season. Across those three seasons, he’s scored 1,879 runs with six hundreds in 22 matches at 53.69.
Ferguson has clearly been a good player for a long time but why has it taken so long for the selectors to select him for a test match?
Players like Ferguson and Michael Klinger have been plundering runs (comparatively to other batsmen) at Sheffield Shield level for years, and they have never been given the chance to debut for Australia.
It seems that certain selectors (Rod Marsh I’m talking to you) are basing their selection more on ‘feel’ and the ‘look’ of a player rather than numbers. Knock down the door long enough at domestic level, and you deserve a chance to wear the baggy green.
Ferguson’s first-class average of 40.23 from 101 matches isn’t amazing, but we no longer have batsmen like Michael Bevan and Brad Hodge averaging close to or above 50 during their careers in first-class cricket. Ferguson is effectively the best of an average bunch.
Below is a table displaying the statistics of the best young batsmen that are playing domestic first-class cricket in Australia. The best players from the table and next in line for test selection are Nic Maddinson, Kurtis Patterson, Cameron Bancroft, Peter Handscomb, Hilton Cartwright and Jake Lehmann (all in bold).
Cameron Bancroft is the only non-Test player other than Ferguson to have averaged above 45 in each of the past two seasons of the Sheffield Shield. Bancroft has had one chance for Australia at T20 level but could be a chance at the top of the order or at number six this summer if Shaun Marsh’s injury woes continue and Joe Burns fails to cement his spot.
Another Western Australian in Hilton Cartwright topped the averages last year in Sheffield Shield with 409 runs at 68.16, while Victoria’s Peter Handscomb has struck 1579 runs at 47.85 since the start of 2014-15.
Matthew Wade is a great batsman, but his glovework is second-rate. If his wicketkeeping improves enough, he should replace Peter Nevill as the wicketkeeper-batsman in the Australian team. Yes, keeping is important but your wicketkeeper must be a genuine batsman these days and Nevill is far from that.
The second round of the Sheffield shield wrapped up on Monday, November, 7. From the below table the young batsman that made runs during the round included:
Centuries:
Jake Weatherald
Jake Lehmann
Nic Maddison
Half centuries:
Peter Handscomb
Kurtis Patterson
Marnus Labuschagne
Sam Heazlett
Hilton Cartwright
Clearly, many of the young guns are in form!
| Player | Age | First class matches | Innings | Runs | HS | 50s | 100s | Average |
| Nic Maddinson | 24 | 58 | 102 | 3614 | 181 | 17 | 8 | 38.04 |
| Kurtis Patterson | 23 | 32 | 56 | 2171 | 157 | 13 | 5 | 42.56 |
| Cameron Bancroft | 23 | 44 | 79 | 2792 | 211 | 9 | 7 | 37.22 |
| Peter Handscomb | 25 | 60 | 99 | 3639 | 137 | 24 | 8 | 38.71 |
| Travis Head | 22 | 47 | 85 | 2772 | 192 | 20 | 3 | 33.39 |
| Sam Whiteman | 24 | 47 | 71 | 2227 | 174 | 14 | 2 | 34.26 |
| Ryan Carters | 26 | 41 | 73 | 2483 | 209 | 11 | 5 | 36.51 |
| Chris Lynn | 26 | 40 | 69 | 2708 | 250 | 12 | 6 | 44.39 |
| Matthew Wade | 28 | 98 | 149 | 4847 | 152 | 30 | 9 | 39.4 |
| Jake Lehmann | 24 | 18 | 29 | 1322 | 205 | 4 | 5 | 48.96 |
| Travis Dean | 24 | 15 | 26 | 851 | 154* | 4 | 3 | 35.45 |
| Matt Renshaw | 20 | 11 | 21 | 863 | 170 | 2 | 2 | 41.09 |
| Sam Heazlett | 21 | 10 | 19 | 700 | 129 | 6 | 1 | 38.88 |
| Marcus Stoinis | 27 | 37 | 61 | 2193 | 170 | 16 | 4 | 37.81 |
| Jake Weatherald | 22 | 6 | 10 | 442 | 135 | 3 | 1 | 49.11 |
| Hilton Cartwright | 24 | 13 | 18 | 717 | 139 | 4 | 2 | 47.8 |
| Marcus Labuschagne | 22 | 14 | 26 | 796 | 112 | 5 | 2 | 31.84 |
Australia has this strange obsession with playing an all-rounder when we don’t have a world-class all-rounder. It is ludicrous.
If we had a Jacques Kallis or Andrew Flintoff prototype I would understand, but we have Mitch Marsh. Gerard Whateley put it perfectly during the first Test against South Africa ‘the idea of Mitch Marsh is very different to the reality.’
Mitch Marsh is a second-rate international cricketer who doesn’t have the technique, temperament, or talent to succeed as an all-rounder at Test level. He has failed to produce for Australia at Test level time and time again. He has had more than nine lives and deserves to be relegated to Shield cricket to hone his clearly dysfunctional game.
Marsh needs to post some solid numbers with bat and ball before he is even considered again. Marcus Stoinis and Moises Henriques are better all-round options for Australia at the moment but they both have to continue to perform at domestic level to earn their place.
The selectors need to be strong enough to take a gamble on a young batsman. Allow him to acclimatise to Test cricket while batting at six just like the great Ricky Ponting did.
As we don’t have a world-class all-rounder we must play with six specialist batsmen. The Australian selectors need to give themselves an uppercut and start to reward past and recent form, begin to blood some young batsmen and use some bloody common sense.
Build your own fantasy cricket team and put it to the test with Draftstars daily fantasy competitions. Pick your match, pick your team and watch the points roll in to take out cash prizes on each match. What are you really gambling with? Set a deposit limit.
India have announced their 2024 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup squad which is set to be played in the USA and Caribbean. The 15-man…
The Aussie's dismissal summed up Lucknow's night, losing to Kolkata Knight Riders by 98 runs.
As wife Alyssa Healy watches on, Mitchell Starc was back in form, taking three wickets in an over including the dangerous Tim David, to…
Joe Root was showing some brotherly love, giving his younger sibling Billy a chance in their county match.
Australia have reclaimed top spot in the ICC's Test rankings, replacing India. Despite not playing since winning 2-0 in New Zealand in March, Pat…
Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. This quote is often attributed to Albert Einstein, but nobody knows if he…
