If England call stumps early, it's time to revive Australia A

If a humbling Ashes defeat in Melbourne wasn’t enough, England also have to deal with a COVID outbreak within their squad. At this stage, their tour from hell continues.

However, if their COVID cases spread further within the extended squad, enough may finally be enough.

Sydney and Hobart cricket fans would rightfully be upset. However, after over 25 years in the wilderness, it could be time to bring back Australia versus Australia A.

In the summer of 1994-95, the Benson and Hedges one-day series (how times have changed) featured Australia, England, Zimbabwe and Australia A. As it would happen, Australia and Australia A took part in the best-of-three final.

In England and Zimbabwe’s defence, both Australian teams had more than a handy line-up.

A top six of Michael Slater, Mark Taylor, the Waugh brothers, David Boon and Stuart Law featured in the Australian team.

Ian Healy was behind the stumps and two of Australia’s best bowlers, Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, were also in the national one-day line-up.

They would go on to beat Australia A 2-0 in the final series, as you would expect.

However, Australia A unearthed some players that went on to much bigger and brighter things. Matt Hayden, Justin Langer, Ricky Ponting and Michael Bevan all had long careers for Australia.

(Photo by Hamish Blair/Getty Images)

Of course, if England were to pull up stumps early, there would be some issues with BBL rescheduling. It may be easier and perhaps more logical to just release the Australian Test players back into the BBL.

However, so that we could experience two more Test matches, which should be higher quality, we should be pushing for Australia versus Australia A in Sydney and Hobart.

Australia A beat the England Lions earlier in December. The line-up was:
Bryce Street
Henry Hunt
Matt Renshaw
Nic Maddinson
Usman Khawaja
Mitchell Marsh
Josh Inglis
Michael Neser
Mark Steketee
Mitchell Swepson
Scott Boland

It’s a strong XI. Street and Hunt are both young batters with big futures in front of them.

I also highly rate Matt Renshaw and he was very unlucky to be dropped from the Test team in the first place.

Khawaja and Maddinson have been scoring plenty of runs at Shield level and Mitchell Marsh, in his current form, would score plenty of runs in any format.

Josh Inglis was close to beating Alex Carey to the vacant keeper position at the Gabba, while Neser and Boland have both experienced Test success this summer.

At the risk of alienating every Victorian I know, I still don’t think Boland’s 6-7 gets him a spot in Australia’s best XI. It does however underline Australia’s depth.

(Photo by Daniel Pockett – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)

Jhye Richardson probably knocks out Mark Steketee and Mitchell Swepson will get a taste of Test action in the near future, quite possibly in Pakistan.

This is a side that would beat a number of international teams and England would likely be included within that bracket.

Would they beat Australia?

George Bailey would certainly hope not and I’m sure he would be right. Australia would win, but we’d be unlikely to see any matches finish within seven sessions.

Like most Australians, I’d like to see England get through the next two Tests and show a lot more fight, although the 5-0 result is still appealing.

If the worst-case scenario happens though, and one or both of the remaining Tests are cancelled, you could do a lot worse than revive a once-used concept.