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Opinion
There is such a thing as thinking too far outside the box, and Australia’s bold, shocking move to drop Travis Head for the first Test against India fits that mould perfectly.
A combination of a pitch seemingly designed to allow Ravindra Jadeja to feast on the Aussies’ crop of left-handers, plus an average of barely over 15 in five Tests in Pakistan and Sri Lanka last year, led the selectors to feel a man who averaged 87.5 across the home summer – including the best innings of the five Tests, his brilliant counterattacking 92 on a Gabba greentop – was surplus to requirements in Nagpur.
It’s the sort of left-field, radical strategy that would have been unthinkable to Australian teams in years gone by, but has become in vogue on tours of India of late – Usman Khawaja’s susceptibility to spin saw him dumped from the team heading into the 2017 series despite averaging 58.1 in the home summer.
This time, though, it could hardly have backfired more swiftly or spectacularly: Head’s nominal replacement in the middle order, Matt Renshaw, fell for a golden duck as the Aussies were bundled out for just 177.
Head’s omission is one of those decisions that makes some sort of sense, but becomes more and more bewildering if you spend any time thinking it through.
Yes, the South Australian had a torrid time of it in spinning conditions in 2022: but Australia seem to be labouring under the delusion that our batting stocks are so strong that two poor series amid 18 months of outstanding batting form aren’t good enough to make the XI.
Sure, if Darren Lehmann, Michael Clarke and Simon Katich were waiting in the wings, as they were in 2004, you could afford to be harsh; but while Renshaw fought doggedly six years ago on the last tour of India, as well as a trip to Bangladesh a few months later, an average of 25.67 across six Tests hardly screams ‘master of the conditions’.
That’s when you also remember that Renshaw, despite returning to the team in Sydney as a number six, is an opening batter.
Travis Head. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
He toured India last time at the top of the order. His solid Sheffield Shield form during the summer, including a supreme unbeaten 200 against NSW, was at the top of the order. And he does it, for the most part, out of the Gabba – not exactly a venue where an opener has to worry too much about facing menacing spin before their eye is in.
He’s also a left-hander – if the selectors were so worried about an excess of southpaws on THAT Nagpur pitch to jettison Head, replacing him with another leftie is so absurd it’s almost laughable.
That’s not to say Renshaw was unselectable: rather that if he were to be picked, it had to be opening the batting, with David Warner on the chopping block instead of Head.
Warner wasn’t as poor as Head on last year’s tours of India and Pakistan, but he still averaged just 29 with the bat – add to that his sole century since the COVID-19 pandemic, his average of 24.25 across eight Tests and two previous tours of India, and a summer that saw him muster nearly two-thirds of his runs in one innings, meant his spot in the team should no longer have been certain. Especially if not even Head was safe.
Sure enough, Warner was gone 13 balls into the innings, bowled neck and crop by Mohammed Shami for one.
Yes, he copped a seed: but openers are paid to keep good balls from good bowlers out, and Warner seems incapable of doing that anymore. To fall to a quick on such a spin-friendly pitch, good ball or no, was just about inexcusable.
Forget horses for courses: dropping Head and playing Renshaw and Warner is like pulling a prize thoroughbred out of a race on a rainy day because he hates a wet track and saddling up a greyhound instead.
The damage this will do to Head’s confidence, surely sky-high after two superb summers and a white-ball recall, could be equally significant for the Test team down the road.
Being dropped, regardless of circumstance, does funny things to the mind – it’s worth noting Renshaw spent the better part of three years barely making a run in the Shield after being unceremoniously dumped before the 2017/18 Ashes.
It also deprives Head, a future Australian Test captaincy candidate and a middle-order staple for the foreseeable future, a chance to, y’know, find a way to get better in conditions he finds tricky.
Is it worth the, at best, 10-15 extra runs per innings that Renshaw (or Warner) could in theory provide if previous averages remain true, to deny the guy who bossed a home Ashes and has even been compared to Adam Gilchrist of late the opportunity to find a way to succeed?
If Head were to have been picked and failed again in Nagpur, and Australia remained concerned about an abundance of left-handers, then dropping him for Cameron Green for the second Test and retaining Peter Handscomb – who hardly looked the spin-playing prodigy but at least scrapped his way to 31 – would have been harsh, but reasonable.
Instead, Australia have officially entered the pantheon of Test selection howlers. And the pain already caused might be just the tip of the iceberg.
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