For too long now, Australia have sat on their hands and refused to lift a finger to address the rapid decline of its entire batting order, a decline that reached a nadir on Friday evening in Perth that by no means can be waved away as an outlier given the 18 months building up to it.
“Unless something, anything happens, calamity is a near certainty – and the only remaining question is whether total implosion happens this summer, or even more humiliatingly, this time next year.”
This might seem like a pretty good summation of Australia’s disastrous final session on Day 1 of the first Ashes Test, to turn a position of strength after Mitchell Starc’s magnificent seven-wicket haul in the afternoon into a likely deficit by stumps.
But actually, I wrote it nearly 12 months ago to the day, in the hours after an almost identical opening day of the summer against India: a visiting team thundered out by a fast-bowling masterclass on a sprightly track, an evening disaster with the bat, even a debuting opener dismissed cheaply LBW to the opposition’s star quick via a DRS review.
Einstein never actually defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, but then again you didn’t have to be Einstein to fear this summer’s Ashes would be defined by whether an Australian top order that has teetered on the edge of calamity for the better part of two years could squeeze one last ordinary summer out of itself to let the urn be saved by Starc and whichever quicks aren’t on the physio table for each subsequent Test.
The top seven Australia chose for Optus Stadium is nearly identical to that which began the summer in 2022/23, and 2023/24, and last year against India.
In the first, only Jake Weatherald is in for the now-retired David Warner; it’s the same plus a swapping of all-rounders in Cameron Green for Mitchell Marsh in the second; and you just need to replace Warner’s name with Nathan McSweeney for the Test 12 months ago.
This is a top six that, in Australian conditions more treacherous than any in living memory – England’s display with the ball in the final session on Friday night was among the deadliest seen on these shores by a rival attack in terms of false shot percentage, movement and bounce – has time and again battled complete calamity, both as individuals and as a collective.
A year ago, Australia’s batting collapse gifted India a shock 46-run lead, and use of the most favourable batting conditions of the summer across Days 2 and 3 to pummel the hosts into submission to win by 295 runs.
It didn’t prove a portent of calamity to come – Travis Head’s twin centuries for the rest of the series saved Australia’s bacon, Steve Smith came to the party with two of his own after a nightmare start, and led by Pat Cummins, the bowlers were good enough to win the series virtually on their own, bowling India out for under 200 in five of seven completed innings across the last four matches.
Maybe the bullet will be dodged again this summer. Maybe Starc can rissole Bazball again on Day 2. Maybe Head or Smith or someone even unlikelier can save the day with a fourth-innings hundred for the ages to stop England from claiming their first Test win down under since Julia Gillard was Prime Minister. Maybe none of that will happen, but Cummins and Josh Hazlewood’s return for the second Test will reduce the Poms’ batting to an even greater train wreck than Australia’s.
Should it not, blame will fall first on the top six, but should fall even more harshly on a selection panel who look set to reap what they sowed through three years of indolence in which Australia’s batting has hurtled towards the disaster that now looks close at hand.
Last year, my biggest gripe was that Warner’s prolonged farewell across the 2022/23 and 2023/24 summers wasted precious time Australia could have used to find its next long-term opener, accepting diminishing returns from an over-the-hill great instead of giving a fresh face the extended opportunity anyone new to the Test arena needs to find their feet.
At that time, selectors had spent the 10 months since Warner hung up the Kaboom rifling through stop-gaps and throwing youngsters to the wolves: none of that has changed, except now it’s 22 months.
Smith’s ascent to the top, solely to accommodate Cameron Green’s return to the team without needing to make a tough call on an established player, lasted four Tests before he decided it wasn’t for him. McSweeney got handed the grenade of Jasprit Bumrah in a position he’d never played first-class cricket in.
Sam Konstas lit up Boxing Day to be the first Aussie all series to put Bumrah off his game, then played two reckless shots in his second Test that proved enough to get him axed for a tour of Sri Lanka where everyone made a million runs and the World Test Championship final too, a harsh call completely incompatible with undue shows of faith in every other Australian batter.
The Konstas of the West Indies deserved to be dropped, but when you’ve told a 19-year old in no uncertain terms that the natural game that got him his debut and sparked his rich vein of form last summer won’t keep him in the team for long, you can’t be surprised if that messes with their head.
We’re seeing the consequences of three years’ worth of selection indolence now.
Since Warner’s retirement, Khawaja has three scores of 50+ in 16 Tests, with an average of 30 bloated by an obscene 232 against Sri Lanka, on the kind of pitch and against the type of bowling that I bet McSweeney and Konstas wish they’d been able to cash in on.
Turning 39 in December, a run of form that ordinary for that long should have left him one poor Test, or even bad lead-in Sheffield Shield form, away from the axe – but having twiddled their thumbs instead of indentifying and investing in a long-term opening replacement for Warner, to move on from Khawaja would leave two vacancies at the top of the order. Even with his head now firmly on the chopping block in the court of public opinion, if not at the selection table as well, as a result of not just his Day 1 failure, but the series of events that saw him unable to open the batting and exposed Weatherald to the menace of Archer’s first over.
You can say the same about Labuschagne: yes, his lead-in form across all cricket this summer was phenomenal, but the ease with which he was able to slot back in only came due to a lack of alternatives, again because at no point in the last three years has the opportunity been taken to blood fresh talent.
Remember when it took Khawaja two and a half years of consistent Shield run-making to get his Test lifeline in January 2022? It took Damien Martyn the better part of a decade, too.
Imagine if, say, Matt Renshaw or Cameron Bancroft, 29 and 33 years old respectively at the time of writing, had been the ones to replace Warner back in January 2024, and given those 15 Tests leading into the Ashes to earn their place. Or hell, if once he made the team Konstas had been kept faith with in the easier climes of Sri Lanka and the daunting assignment of the WTC final, and treated as a player of promise and potential rather than discarded at the first wobble.
Maybe none of them would have been up to facing Archer, Brydon Case, Gus Atkinson, Mark Wood and Ben Stokes on the first evening in Perth – but at least then we’d know. At least then we’d have given players talented enough to score quality runs in tough conditions in their first stints in Test cricket the best possible opportunity to leave the top six stronger, healthier and more future-proofed than it is now.
12 months ago, my solution to all this was for something to give: either Khawaja or Smith to be farewelled, or a statement made by dropping the then-out-of-form Head or Labuschagne, with their replacements given time and patience to make their spots their own.
Change happened, and helped Australia win the series – but it was Marsh and McSweeney making way, just as it was Beau Webster, who couldn’t have done much more across his first seven Tests played in six different countries but was nevertheless deemed surplus to requirements to start the Ashes.
Meanwhile, the mediocrity infecting Australia’s top order festered beneath the surface, held at bay only by Smith’s rage against the dying light and Head’s swashbuckling return to his best playing in a not-dissimilar way to the Bazball approach we all love to deride when it’s England playing like that.
Now, I’m not sure there is a solution – or at least, not one that doesn’t leave the urn in an equal state of jeopardy to what they’re in right now. It’s too late for change to be anything other than a desperate shy at the stumps of the sort that summed up the horror show that was Australia’s 2010/11 Ashes, when it was Phillip Hughes, Smith, Xavier Doherty and Michael Beer getting plunged into the furnace.
There’s never a time for panic – but there comes a point when measured pragmatism pales in the face of the inevitable staring them in the face. For evidence of that, see England’s 2013/14 Ashes series, which effectively ended the careers of Jonathan Trott, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior and Graeme Swann plus a host of other lesser lights in one fell swoop, and a summer of unfettered humiliation.
It didn’t have to be this way. In its halcyon days, Australian cricket still found a way to give new blood their chance. Ricky Ponting developed into an all time great from the nurturing cradle of a team good enough to let him find his feet. Ditto Michael Clarke, Darren Lehmann, Simon Katich, Michael Hussey, and even the ones that didn’t prove long-term players, like Martin Love, Stuart Law and Matthew Elliott.
Instead, the powers that be leading the team have sat on their hands and watched a once-great group of batters steadily decline, and failed to act in any meaningful way.
They didn’t pay the price last summer. Maybe, cricket gods willing, they won’t again this time around. But when the fall comes, rebuilding from the rubble is going to be harder, longer, and much, much more painful than it ever needed to be.
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