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Opinion
Mitch Marsh could be a white-ball star for Australia and should quit first-class cricket to focus on becoming an elite ODI and T20 player.
After 32 Tests, Marsh looks a long way from becoming a bona fide Test all-rounder, yet he is a highly valuable ODI cricketer and has major untapped potential as a T20 player.
In his comeback from injury on Saturday, Marsh smashed 56 not out from 22 balls in a man-of-the-match effort for the Perth Scorchers to remind us of his enormous talent.
Australia would have had a better chance of winning the 2019 World Cup with a fit Marsh in place of struggling all-rounder Marcus Stoinis and the Scorchers captain may yet make a run at next year’s T20 World Cup.
At 28 years old, he looks far more likely to make an impact at international level in white-ball cricket and should channel his energies accordingly – and not just because Marsh’s skill set is better suited to the shorter formats.
Marsh’s long history of injuries, together with the huge physical demands of being a pace-bowling all-rounder, mean that combining all three formats will grind his fragile body into the turf.
The increasingly specialised nature of T20 cricket is making it harder and harder for cricketers to be effective in all three formats.
In the decade to come there will be far fewer triple-format players. The reason the West Indies are such a powerhouse in T20 cricket despite being very weak for years in Tests is that many of their players are white-ball specialists.
Were Marsh to give up first-class cricket and concentrate only on limited-overs competitions he could become one of the world’s elite short-form all-rounders.
Aggression and hard hands have hampered him in Tests, where he has averaged just 25 with the bat in 55 innings despite playing as a batsman first and foremost.
Marsh has been given an enormous amount of Test opportunities and has been exposed again and again as being out of his depth.
Meanwhile, he remains Australia’s best ODI all-rounder and could be a key player in the next World Cup in just over three years from now.
(AP Photo/Andy Brownbill)
With Marcus Stoinis now dumped from the ODI set-up due to a long-form trough, Marsh is exactly the type of player Australia need – a savage middle-order ball-striker who is also a competent bowler. But the toll of being a three-format cricketer, and the regular injuries that have come with that, mean he hasn’t played an ODI for Australia in nearly two years.
In their three-match ODI series next month, Australia will use Ashton Agar in the same role Marsh and Stoinis filled in the past. Agar’s limited batting ability compared to Marsh will leave Australia with a long tail. They would look far better balanced with Marsh at six or seven, swapping between those two positions with Alex Carey depending on the match situation.
A major drawback of Stoinis as an ODI player is his consistently slow starts to innings, which is unacceptable for a middle-order batsman. On the other hand, Marsh has demonstrated the ability to explode from early in innings. In one of his most recent ODIs he came to the crease with just over ten overs left and destroyed a full-strength New Zealand attack, caning 76 not out from 40 balls, including seven sixes.
These are the sorts of devastating finishing knocks Australia need from their ODI all-rounder. Marsh has an excellent ODI record batting at six or lower, with an average of 37 and a strike rate of 98.
In T20Is, meanwhile, Marsh has had limited opportunities for Australia, playing just 11 matches spread across the past eight years. His BBL record is excellent, with 1151 runs at 40, and a strike rate of 126. But if he were to focus more on short-form cricket, he could become a far more dynamic T20 batsman.
With his ferocious striking ability on the back or front foot against both pace and spin, Marsh looks tailor-made for T20s. He underlined that on the weekend by obliterating a solid Melbourne Renegades attack. Marsh did that from number five in the order and he can build a bright future as a T20 wrecking ball in that position.
Australia have a glut of top-order T20 batsmen but too few cricketers who can dominate at five or six in the order. Marsh has the tools to become such a player. He could accelerate his development and enhance his ODI career by stepping away from red-ball cricket.