The touring squad to India has left a sour taste in my mouth. It genuinely looked like the selectors had turned the corner with Matt Renshaw and Peter Handscomb. While Nic Maddinson was a miss, our issues of structure and relative stability in the top six was being addressed.
In this regard, picking four spinners implies downright certainty there will be a rank turner or two in India.
But while the pitches are prepared to India’s strength, that does not mean we should take inexperienced or third-rate spinners.
Nathan Lyon, Stephen O’Keefe, Ashton Agar and Mitchell Swepson are hardly going to strike fear into the hearts of the Indian top six, and as Ronan O’Connell alluded to, recent statistics on spin bowling performances in India should not dictate the national selection panel picking more spinners to solve the problem.
I thought it would be worthwhile to look at the impact fast bowlers had in two series wins in India.
The first was Australia finally breaking the ‘final frontier’ in 2004, with the memorable 2-1 series win – our first in India since 1969.
Bowlers took 68 Indian wickets over the series, and of those, 43 were claimed by quicks. This is not to understate the role of Shane Warne, who also had a terrific series, but the scene was set with superb medium fast bowling.
In addition to the plethora of wickets, Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Michael Kasprowicz all hovered around the 2.5 runs per over in economy rate.
To support the quicks, the Adam Gilchrist-led side also learnt lessons from the 2001 tour, and parked deep sweepers to protect the cover and midwicket boundaries and thus stem the flow of runs early in each Indian innings. The home side’s stroke-makers were curtailed and the touring quicks ‘out attritioned’ what is regarded now as a legendary top six.
The second example goes back to 1983, where the West Indies had a resounding 3-0 victory over a six Test series. Again, the secret to the success was Clive Lloyd continuing his mantra of taking four quicks into every Test during their frightful reign of terror as the best side in the world. Spin was an afterthought, and similar to Australia’s current predicament, the Windies did not have an international-standard attacking spinner.
In that series, an astounding 97 out of a possible 100 wickets fell to fast bowlers (Larry Gomes and Roger Harper chimed in for three in sporadic bowling appearances).
While we do not have the calibre of attack like the fabled Windies teams, or our own side from 2004, our current fast bowling unit is our strength.
We have Mitch Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins, Jackson Bird and Chadd Sayers, just to name five – they are all taking wickets and four of those bowlers have done so for a couple of seasons. Hazlewood, Bird and Sayers can also critically bowl long spells – the untested Sayers is a proven and consistent wicket-taker on the ‘highway’ at the Adelaide Oval.
While Lyon has been a very good stock bowler to tie the end up over the last few seasons, he is not an attacking weapon and will not win Tests on Days 4 or 5. He looks lost in a side that does not contain Ryan Harris and Mitchell Johnson.
In addition, in the last nine Tests he has played, his economy rate has ballooned from a career average around the very respectable three per over mark. Where he was once parsimonious, he is now clearly targeted by opposition teams. Against Sri Lanka, South Africa and Pakistan in 2016, his poor record across was complemented by going at around 3.5 runs per over. There have been too many four-balls.
O’Keefe must be picked as our primary spinner, to tie up the end, and follow the direction of other international sides in having a left-arm ‘nude’ spinner in the ranks. Even the Decision Review System offers so much more to the left-arm orthodox over the wicket.
O’Keefe also has an immense record to boot, and can genuinely bat with a first-class average better than Mitchell Marsh (that, however, would not be hard).
The clincher in this debate is that Steve Smith does not know how to best operate spinners.
This was evident in how he utilised Lyon right throughout the Test summer, along with the bizarre non-selection of Adam Zampa, and the non-utilisation of Glen Maxwell in the first two ODI matches against Pakistan.
Considering Zampa plays his home Big Bash League games at the MCG, and was one of the leading ODI wicket-takers in 2016, the decision was even more bamboozling.
This suggests that our fit and firing quicks should carry the load. Previous attempts to include supplementary spinners have generally led to them being ‘one tour wonders’, or the subject of difficult ‘who am I’ trivia questions at the pub.
Ironically, it overlooks the key point in the whole debate on the XI – to win in India you need generally two or three batsmen to have a good series collectively, which makes our obsession picking bits-and-pieces all-rounders all the more frustrating.
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