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With question marks remaining over their top six, Australia could rue picking the out-of-form Peter Handscomb as their sole back-up batsman for the four-Test series in South Africa, which starts tomorrow.
There is a strong chance the Aussies may need to make a change to their batting line-up at some point during that series given South Africa is a difficult place for batting and the Proteas have a supreme attack.
Only captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner would be guaranteed of avoiding the axe if they made a string of low scores to start this series, which makes the back-up batting slot especially crucial.
They would have been better placed picking a reserve batsman who was in great touch and sending Handscomb back to the Sheffield Shield to correct the muddled technique England picked apart.
Handscomb was dropped for the third Ashes Test after a sequence of strange and ugly knocks at Brisbane and Adelaide. By his final innings of that series, Handscomb looked lost. He wandered all over the crease, almost trod on his stumps several times, and repeatedly tried to shovel the ball across the line against the swing from way outside off stump.
It was the single most curious innings played by an Australian Test batsman in recent memory, and one which suggested Handscomb had lost faith in his technique.
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Since then, he’s not proven he’s regained touch – unlike, for example, Matt Renshaw who was dumped for the first Ashes Test due to a form trough and is now churning out runs for Queensland.
That’s not entirely Handscomb’s fault, given he’s only played two first-class matches in three months since he was dropped, making scores of 0, 114*, 0 and 5. Is one good knock among three failures enough to warrant a recall?
The latter two of those failures came in Australia’s sole warm-up match, this past week against South Africa A in Benoni. What was more concerning than his lack of runs in that match were the unsightly ways in which Handscomb was dismissed.
In the first innings the Victorian planted his front foot on the line of middle stump and then aimed a wildly optimistic drive at a delivery which was almost a metre outside off stump, squirting a catch to backward point.
In the second dig, Handscomb got himself into a bizarre position as he chopped a wide delivery from paceman Duane Olivier back on to his stumps. His front foot was outside the line of leg stump, and his back foot almost outside off stump, leaving him wide open and very deep in his crease when Olivier released the ball.
For an out-of-form batsman to get out in the same match while using two greatly-different batting techniques is a major concern. Handscomb appears no closer to settling on a batting strategy, which is a serious problem for Australia given he may well be needed to come into the XI during this monumental series.
Peter Handscomb plays a square drive. (AAP Image/David Crosling)
Australia have gambled by sticking with Cameron Bancroft after the opener’s defensive technique was exposed by a struggling English attack on dead decks in the Ashes. Bancroft faces a much more difficult task this next month as South Africa is statistically the hardest country in the world for Test openers and the Proteas have an extraordinary pace unit.
Vernon Philander, in particular, shapes as a nightmare match-up for Bancroft with his ability to land delivery after delivery on a perfect length on or just outside off stump. If Bancroft struggles in the first two Tests of this series Australia will strongly consider shifting Shaun Marsh up the order to face the new ball, as he does in the Shield.
That would leave the tourists with no option but to lob Handscomb into a searing Test series while he is in the midst of trying to decode his own game. This would be a ridiculous scenario.
With 649 runs at 65 in the Shield this summer, Glenn Maxwell would have been fa ar better option.
As it is, Australia must hope their top six stands up in difficult conditions against an elite attack or they’ll have to call upon a batsman who doesn’t look ready to play Test cricket.