With just one more match to prepare for the World Test Championship final, Australia face a Catch-22 situation when they pick their team for Thursday’s second clash in Sri Lanka.
Do they stick with a winning combination to ensure they close out the series 2-0 or do they bring Sam Konstas back to open so that the teenage prodigy can get another match under his belt before the Lord’s showdown with South Africa?
But there is a third alternative and it’s not good news for Konstas.
The Australians are expecting Cameron Green to be fit to face the Proteas but only as a specialist batter.
With Travis Head set to return to his favoured No.5 position when Australia defend their WTC crown, that leaves a spot vacant at the top of the order.
Green revealed a few months ago that he was expecting to be called on to try his hand at opening after the Steve Smith experiment failed but that idea was shelved when stress fractures were uncovered in his back.
“It’s always a thought that it may happen, and if it does happen I am very happy to put my hand up and do it,” Green told AAP in August.
And if Green opens but can’t bowl, it would mean all-rounder Beau Webster would likely survive the middle-order squeeze ahead of Galle debutant centurion Josh Inglis due to his ability to send down medium-pacers as a fifth bowling option, which could be very handy on the Lord’s pitch.
“We’ll keep our options open as a general theme,” coach Andrew McDonald said on Sunday in Galle when asked about potential changes to the batting line-up for the WTC final.
“100 per cent it’ll be a different order to that (first Sri Lanka Test). What the order looks like will depend on the conditions.”
Reading between the lines it appears Konstas may have to wait until the West Indies tour later in June or perhaps even longer to get another crack at Test cricket.
Matt Kuhnemann celebrates after taking the wicket of Jeffrey Vandersay. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)I’m
Squad mentality bearing fruit
One of the recurring themes of the Australian team in recent years has been their belief in their “squad mentality” even though they have largely stuck by many of the same players in their Test XI.
But the first Test shellacking of Sri Lanka was proof that the players who have been in and around the camp in recent years have benefitted from the experience.
Inglis could not have looked more comfortable in his first Test innings – you can’t get a better introduction than coming in at 3-401 against a fatigued attack on a favourable batting track but he looked like a seasoned veteran.
Turning 30 next month, he is no spring chicken, particularly having played 55 white-ball internationals, but his ability to handle spin with aplomb gives Australia even more depth to a middle order that was looking decidedly skinny just a few months ago.
Inglis’ arrival is also bad news for Peter Handscomb as he has now commandeered the reserve batter spot for any subcontinental tours, if not claimed a permanent middle-order berth when the tracks are turning.
Matt Kuhnemann also looks like part of the furniture for tours to Asia even though his nine-wicket Galle haul was just his fourth Test and first since the India tour nearly two years ago.
Todd Murphy and Beau Webster didn’t excel this time around but they are also part of an impressive wider squad with Test experience that the Aussies can now call upon, along with Konstas, Nathan McSweeney and the perennially unlucky Scott Boland.
Usman Khawaja. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
Reverse sweep not risk it once was
It’s hard for older fans to get their head around but the reverse sweep has officially jumped the shark from being a carnival shot to being part of a batter’s arsenal.
The unorthodox shot is now rather orthodox and has been for a few years now.
But the fact that a traditional batter like Usman Khawaja now uses it as a get out of jail free card in spinning conditions shows it’s come a long way from Mike Gatting’s infamous dismissal in the 1987 World Cup or even when Glenn Maxwell was heavily criticised a decade ago when Australia were trying to hold out for a draw against Pakistan.
Khawaja kept frustrating the bowlers by sweeping against the grain to backward point, forcing field changes and opening up more gaps in what was already a porous Sri Lankan fielding unit.
Head-first attacks need defensive fields
Speaking, or writing, of the importance of setting fields, Sri Lanka were Bazballed by the team which usually stands at the other end of the spectrum when it comes to such tactics.
With Travis Head opening the batting, they should have been expecting nothing other than him to come out firing from the word go.
Three boundaries in the first over put the Aussies on the front foot and they never surrendered that momentum over the four days required to dish out a demolition job of the Sri Lankans.
When Pat Cummins set defensive fields from the opening over of innings as England’s openers tried to bash the Australian bowlers into oblivion, he was criticised by certain, mainly English, sections of the media.
Steve Smith celebrates with Usman Khawaja. (Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images)
It all comes down to the question of should you fight fire with fire? Firefighters don’t. They use water. That extinguishes the blaze.
If you keep setting attacking fields while batters are blazing away, you will get burnt.
By the time Sri Lankan captain Dhananjaya de Silva changed his field settings, Australia were already off to a flyer. Throw in his poor fielding, shambolic DRS calls and throwing his wicket away in each innings, it was a comedy of errors from the home skipper.
Specialists needed as Wilson strikes again
It didn’t matter much given the lopsided nature of the contest but Australia’s “love affair” with Joel Wilson continued in the second innings at Galle when he somehow gave Kusal Mendis a reprieve on an LBW shout.
Wilson claimed the spikes on the Snicko indicated Mendis had faintly edged the ball as it thundered into his pads off Kuhnemann, dead in front of middle stump.
Umpires are told that if a “murmur” in the Snicko soundchart matches up with the ball passing bat then they are to rule that there has been an edge, whether it’s for a catch or, in this case, saving a batter in an LBW shout.
But it was also clear that this slight uptick (not even close to a spike) was caused by other noise as the batter tried to sweep to fine leg.
The ICC needs to invest in specialist TV umpires who are specifically trained in the audio arts rather than rotating their on-field officials around, which leads to a pot luck scenario for teams.
And the Aussies keep getting the booby prize of Wilson, who has a history of striking at inopportune times with baffling decisions.
A centralised video bunker works in other sports – for international clashes, the ICC should consider this option so that the video reviews are not compromised more than necessary by the impossible to totally eliminate factor of human error.
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