'Renshaw the Rock' is just what Australia need

Of the last ten batsman to debut in Tests for Australia, only three faced more deliveries in their first match than Matt Renshaw did at Adelaide as the home side smashed South Africa.

Despite never attaining even a modest level of fluency, Renshaw managed to soak up 183 balls for one dismissal in a rare display of stubborn crease occupation by an Aussie.

Only Adam Voges (247 balls), Alex Doolan (205) and Ed Cowan (194) ate up a greater number of deliveries among the last 10 batting debutants for Australia.

Renshaw’s first international appearance was simultaneously unsightly and delightful. Unsightly in the appearance of his strokeplay, delightful in the manner of his defiance.

As I wrote two weeks ago, after Australia’s batting capitulations in Hobart, the home team badly required a batsman who specialised in ugly runs. They needed a new Chris Rogers, someone capable of shackling their ego and batting well within themselves for the good of their team.

That is just what they got from 20-year-old Renshaw. There was a humility about Renshaw’s batting which was truly refreshing from an Australian perspective. We have grown accustomed to watching Test batsmen who at all times look to impose themselves upon the bowlers.

There is merit in allowing batsmen to play to their strengths. But there are also times when a cricketer simply must adapt and be prepared to adopt an entirely foreign mode of attack or defence.

In the lead up to this Test I praised Renshaw’s versatility, his capacity for switching up or down a gear in his batting according to match situations.

This was highlighted during his last Shield match for Queensland. Across that match, Renshaw dawdled to 22 runs from his first 103 deliveries, before sprinting to 136 runs from his next 151 balls. On debut against South Africa he was unable to move beyond a crawling pace.

Opposed to a wonderful pace attack on a pitch offering decent assistance to the bowlers Renshaw concentrated purely on batting time.

His batting was devoid of ego. When he played and missed, as he did more than 20 times in the Test, he did not admonish himself or try to make up for it by aiming an aggressive stroke at the next delivery.

More often than not he just nodded at the bowler, acknowledging their small victory, and maintained the focus on his simple task. In this way, he displayed fine patience and mental toughness for such a young cricketer.

His defensive technique, too, was to be admired. Rogers spoke in the media recently of the importance of playing the line of deliveries on seaming tracks. Years of English county cricket had taught Rogers not to chase after the ball when it deviated off the seam, as is the natural instinct.

It was this need to feel bat on ball which often brought the downfall of Australian batsman at Hobart when Vernon Philander, Kyle Abbott and Kagiso Rabada expertly jagged the ball off the seam. It was the same story in England last year on the two green pitches on which Australia collapsed.

Renshaw, however, was Rogers-like in the way he maintained his shape in defence, allowing seaming deliveries to slip past his edge. He did not seem worried in the slightest when he played and missed. It was another ball he’d survived.

It seems an awfully strange thing to be praising a batsman for the style in which they miss the ball. There is a definite skill to it, however, as Rogers noted. In this way, Renshaw looks well suited to batting in the very conditions that have time and again brought Australia unstuck.

He is an old-school opener in the mould of Rogers. It is no coincidence that Warner was at his best when he was partnered by Rogers.

With his gritty, circumspect approach to taking the sheen off the new ball, Rogers perfectly complemented the cavalier Warner. One thing Renshaw will need to learn from Rogers, however, is the value of rotating the strike.

Across his 183 deliveries, Renshaw remarkably faced 164 dot balls. In other words, nine out of every ten deliveries he faced was a dot. At one point he remarkably joined 33 dots in a row.

In the circumstances this was not a major concern. The first innings began with Australia being sent in under lights on a moist pitch against an attack which had dominated them this series.

Renshaw only made 10 runs, but in grinding out 46 balls he managed to deny the Proteas any early momentum. In the second innings Australia’s run rate was irrelevant given they had more than five sessions in which to chase down a total of 127.

Going forward, however, Renshaw will need to be wary of denying Warner the strike as he did on debut. His opening partner loves to keep the scoreboard ticking over. Rogers recognised this and was clever at working good deliveries into gaps for a single, or dropping them at his feet and taking off.

This is something Renshaw can learn. What is far more difficult for batsman to acquire, once they’ve already reached Test level, is composure and restraint. Renshaw is drenched in those attributes, which have been largely absent from Australia’s batting line-up since the retirement of Rogers.

Australia may just have unearthed a gem. Not a sparkling diamond, but a sturdy stone.