What lessons will Australia learn from the tour of Sri Lanka?

Maxwell’s FC bowling average is over 40, with barely one wicket per match. It’s not Test standard against India, so should not be a factor in his selection, even if it’s better than Head or Labs.

Enjoyed the article Max, thank you. And can only hope the right people are also asking these questions as we progress towards our next series and of course the India tour. Your article also reminds me of how long it seems since both opening positions have been settled. Probably going back to when Cameron Bancroft and Joe Burns had these roles. Now that Khawaja seems first choice, the spotlight falls on Warner. An interesting period between this season's home series up to the end of next year's ashes awaits.

Good point about the scoring runs. England made massive runs on their last tour of India. Unfortunately for them, India made more & won anyway. Except for one tour of India, again by England. When the English seamers got enough ball movement & had exceptional line & length for the whole tour. Then won a series there because of that. The tours of India will be almost impossible to win for those countries outside of the sub continent. As India , like Sri Lanka , like Bangladesh , will continue to turn out dust bowl , right angle turning wickets. They have a never ending line of good spinners to choose from & play spin well themselves. As anyone who grows up there ,grows up playing against spin on spinning wickets. Plus often bowl spin themselves. Can teams from outside of that area of the world , out spin & out bat India on dust bowls? It’s possible, but will continue to be most unlikely.

The point regarding left handers against Ash is on point. Players like Usman Khawaja can held his own, Alex Carey too given he is neat sweeper. But Australia will buy themselves serious trouble if they bring Travis Head or David Warner here.I would slightly disagree about leg spinners. Leg spinners traditionally did not do well in India when our batters used to be master at playing spin. So we will see. But one thing Australia must not do, is change position of either Marnus Labushane or Steve Smith. Do not fix something that is not broken, and likely to backfire massively. We tried that with Virat.

Tempo, nice input there, the flip side of Ashwin is that Jadeja averages 21 against right handers, whichever way we look at it we've got to scratch out enough runs to give the bowlers something to bowl at. I'm not sure we have the personnel to do that. A lot of pressure on Smith, hopefully Khawaja can maintain his form. Also Pat can't over bowl Lyon, it's a long series.

Good piece Max. Some of my thoughts on the team for India are below. One thing that doesn't get spoken about enough is just how good Ravichandran Ashwin is at bowling to left-handers. He averages under 20 against left-handers in tests and over 30 against right-handers. You need to be an exceptional player of spin to survive against him as a lefty. The Australian Top 7 in Sri Lanka contained 4 left-handers. Playing this batting lineup in India would be insane, especially Head who has long looked to have a poor technique for playing spin in Asia. Warner too has struggled against Ashwin in the past. Khawaja and Carey are worth giving an opportunity since they played spin well for the most part using sweeps and reverse sweeps in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The easiest choice is slotting in Glenn Maxwell for Travis Head. We really should have done that prior to the first test in Galle. Who to bring in for Warner if you drop him is trickier. Street and Hunt have had promising starts in the Shield, but remain unproven in spinning conditions. Hunt got a hundred against Sri Lanka A, but only averaged 33 for the series on what were reportedly pretty flat tracks (not raging turners). Might be worth a shot but probably needs a big Shield season. Whoever comes in needs to be a right hander in my opinion. You could even push Marnus to open and Smith up to 3 to bring in a right hander in the middle order, though not sure who is the best candidate there either - might depend on who has a great Shield season. Regarding the bowling, Agar should be the third spinner for mine, and some thought should be given to playing him ahead of Swepson in India - particularly if the pitches are taking turn. Leg spinners have not traditionally done well in India (even Shane Warne) - and we've seen the value of an accurate left arm spinner in Sri Lanka. Agar has a poor FC record, but he's mostly bowled on spinner's graveyards in the Shield (the WACA in particular). He did quite well last time he got a chance in Bangladesh, and has lots of experience including in Indian conditions. Hopefully the series lives up to the hype. I think it can be a really good one if Australia pick the right team and play to their potential. India should rightly be heavy favourites though and it could turn ugly fast if Australia are not at their very best.

Agree Puk is a superb talent. It's the other things that have gone on re his successive concussions that bring reliability of availability into it. Perhaps they roll the dice for India and play him on slower pitches where the chance of a concussion issue is reduced. Though maybe not as opener? Still, feels a little wrong saying he should play in the hope there is the reduced chance he doesn't get concussed, because he still might - but ultimately his health is up to him and those around him to make the call. So play him and get the best out of him? And if he gets subbed out after a couple of matches from a hit, so be it given it's their (his) call to play in the first place?

Excellent piece. Kuhnemann is an interesting one. Is he the real deal or an indication of a dearth of quality? Seems like he is more of a white ball spinner to me. Street and Hunt are both very impressive. Time to blood at least one of them given Khawaja’s age. Test openers need time to mature so Warner should be moved on now.

Pucovski is easily the best talent to come out this country in a long time. Probably since Clarke. Green is the other one. Smith and Warner weren't this talented coming through but they made the most of their talents and to be honest with Smith found new ones.

Yes, right now I would take Maxi over Head even with his long FC layoff.

Australia seem to have an abundance of quicks & all rounders, but are in serious need of a replacement for the ageing but nuggety Warner

If Kohli still plays vs Aus, it means one easy wicket for Aus. There are lot of better players ready to grab his spot and I am not sure why he(selectors) is not willing to go back to Domestic tournament groom his game and come back. It took long for selectors to drop Rahane and not sure how long before Kohli/Pujara gets dropped.

Hi Max, – Labs is a leggie and an automatic selection as a batsman. So if Swepson plays, then two leggies is surely enough re those options? With Smith as a 3rd – albeit distant – leggie option. – So is it Head’s offies vs Maxi’s offies + Head’s batting against spin vs Maxi’s batting against spin? – Probably Maxi wins out in the batting given what we have been seeing from Head in turning conditions. – And finally, Head’s fielding vs Maxi’s fielding? Maxi definitely wins out. – I’m not convinced Maxwell is a “Test quality” batsman, but I do think he’s a no-worse option than Head on the subcontinent. And throw in his fielding, then Maxwell is likely the better option over Head in the top 6 in India on balance.

Australia's best chance of winning the India series next year will be in the ability to out-bowl (take wickets) against India. Of course, scoring runs on those wickets is crucial, but I think if we don't have the attack to dismiss India on those pitches, we will lose out, as India will definitely put up an attack to dismiss Australia across the series. Not sure we are likely to produce an individual 2001 Hayden-esque performance that gets us across the line from a batting perspective (noting we still lost that series because we couldn't get the breakthrough bowling, when needed). The key to Australia being successful will be Aus having a strong slow-bowling attack. The question is whether we will be able to put that up with Lyon/Swepson/part timers as the attack. I'm not so sure across a four (five?) match Test series.

Athena intersting some valid comments and agree with alot of them but given the Aussie record in India with series wins being so few and far between and our demonstration of playing spin last week in Sri Lanka India will be favorites on home soil. I agree about many of your last series comments Australia did well and had chances to win the series but we’re well beaten in the last match from memory in northern India and it’s some time ago now ..Here is hoping they pull off the win though

Agree max that’s a stupid comment by McDonald going forward ..He has a clear bias for warner who was a chief culprit (yet again) in removal of paine in terms of the player feedback . I also think bailey has bias to warner as they played so much ODI together .

Good questions. As you say, form over the Australian summer won’t tell you very much about crucial selection questions for India. Unfortunately, many players outside the Test team won’t get much red ball cricket, and a February tour will be too early for the second half of the Shield season. Agree that a replacement for Warner needs to be seriously considered, though I wouldn’t dismiss him entirely, given he knows India so well. Street scores too slowly to be convincing at Test level - and is he any good against spin? I like Hunt better. Got a century vs Sri Lanka A, though also a pair. Head looks a real problem. I agree that three spinners may be worth looking at. Maxwell doesn’t meet the bill - has a very ordinary record in first class cricket- ODIs are irrelevant for Test selection. He won’t have played first class cricket for three and a half years, unless he plays Shield this year. If he does, and has a big season, he might be worth considering for India. Otherwise, he’s probably forgotten what a red ball looks like.

I believe Australia will enter the series as favorite. And their batting will decide the series. In their last tour here, If Australia would won the toss like Pune, they probably would have won the series too. Their bowling department as a whole, is superior to our bowling department as a whole. If any injury happens to Ash, we will be toast. If we look at the Sri Lanka series, and looking at how they are going against Pakistan, i would say Sri Lanka probably benefited from the covid crisis, like we did from the injuries in our tour there. Those forced changed helped us discovered some talent. Prabath Jayasuriya is giving tough time to Pakistanis. Saying that, Australia still has room for improvement,specially regarding Travis Head as well as David Warner. From indian perspective, i would be very reluctant to roll out rank turners against Australia, like we did in Pune in 2017, or Ahmadabad against England. It will play straight into Australia's hand. As thing stand, We will loose seven out of ten match against Australia on those surface, We need surfaces like second Gale test which will give our own batters chance to score.