After Australia’s recent slump in form, opinions and emotions have turned quickly and virulently, resulting in six changes for the Adelaide Test. Has Steven Smith finally got the team he wanted?
Daniel Brettig20-Nov-2016Australian cricket’s great selection U-turn started to gather pace well before the Hobart Test was over, and well before the chairman Rod Marsh handed in his resignation.Having witnessed Australia’s dismemberment for 85 on day one of the the second Test, Marsh summoned the remainder of his panel – Trevor Hohns and Mark Waugh – to speak together at the Bellerive Oval. For much of the third day of the Test, the trio could be seen sitting and talking together in the front row of the chairman’s suite.By the definition of their roles, it is unusual to see more than a couple of the selectors together at any one time, for they are usually flung across the country watching matches. So the sight of Marsh, Hohns and Waugh all together – only the coach Darren Lehmann was absent, sitting with the team – was an ominous one indeed for Australia’s Hobart incumbents.How much of the team for the Adelaide Test actually took shape in the midst of the previous match will be something that remains in the confidence of the panel’s members. But it is abundantly clear that the selectors had decided they needed to change tack, and do so definitively, a long time before the final wicket fell at Bellerive.Hohns, well into his second stint as a selector after having a decade in the role from 1996 to 2006, made sure to assert that the six changes made for Adelaide were not a reaction to downward pressure on the selectors, but rather a proactive move on their part.”Prior to Rod Marsh’s departure, the panel then had these discussions about where we needed to go with a view to the future,” Hohns said. “As we’ve seen we haven’t won very much, we’ve lost a lot of Test matches of late, so we considered it was time to start to revamp and look to the future.”Joe Mennie and Callum Ferguson were dumped after just one Test•Cricket Australia/Getty ImagesThose discussions occurred early enough for the captain Steven Smith and the coach Lehmann to assert immediately after the Test’s conclusion that there would be widespread changes to the team. They were also weighty enough for the chief executive James Sutherland to be able to state something similar the following day, even if there seemed a contradiction in stating the team needed to “close ranks” in one breath, then stating those very ranks would be turned over quite dramatically the next.”You can’t just flick a switch when you’re in a rut like this,” Sutherland said. “You actually need to close ranks work very hard, be very focused on process and work together as a team and I know they’re the things people within the group are thinking about. Now clearly there’s going to be changes for the next Test match and it will be a different group of players that gather for the next Test match.”I don’t know how many changes there will be or anything like that. But those players that are there from this Test match need to be very clear about the challenge and how they bring people, maybe some new people into the team. There’s no short cuts and in the short term we’ve got to just knuckle down and work very hard.”Where all this gets tricky, of course, is in the nature of the U-turn. How could opinions change so quickly and virulently on the likes of Joe Mennie, discarded after two Tests with the squad and one appearance in Hobart? Further questions were raised by the eclipse of Callum Ferguson, flown into Hobart as injury cover, then thrust into the team, then dumped again just as quickly.A major clue to all that was provided by Smith in his emotive post-match press discussion. He was unable to answer in the affirmative to questions about whether he was getting the teams he desired, while at the same time all but begging the selectors to find him some sturdy foot soldiers to ensure next time around he won’t be the lone batsman able to stand fast amid a first innings collapse.To that end, the most significant selections among the six inclusions for Adelaide were arguably those of Matthew Wade and Nic Maddinson. Wade’s recall is at great cost to Peter Nevill, as studious and thoughtful as Wade is brash and outspoken. There is no doubt Nevill is the better gloveman, and little between the pair as first-class batsmen. Wade will “puff his chest” out as Smith prefers, though what that means in terms of runs or catches is debatable.Peter Handscomb, Matthew Wade and Nic Maddinson were the beneficiaries of Australia’s middle-order slump in recent Tests•Getty ImagesMore significant is this: Wade was twice able to guide the Australian tail to a match-turning total while making a fine hundred himself, in the space of 12 Tests. Nevill has now played 17, not yet passed 70, and only once could he claim to have played a match-shaping innings, ironically enough in Adelaide last year. Stolid occupations in vain search of draws in Pallekele against Sri Lanka and Perth against South Africa have failed to hide the fact that in his time the Australian lower order has become the longest and least effective of tails. Wade must help the bowlers find their former quotient of imp.Maddinson’s call-up intrigues still further, for it would seemingly run contrary to the captain’s desire for batsmen to stick out the “tough periods”. Spectators to Sheffield Shield, Big Bash League or even Sydney grade matches would all agree Maddinson is one of the foremost talents of his generation, but also among the most profligate with that talent. Away from the batting crease he is equally unpredictable, the sort to be referred to as a “strange unit” by skeptical team-mates. He has seldom seemed the man to scotch a batting slide.However in this pick can be seen the hand and example of Mark Waugh, and also Smith. Australia want to find another match-winner for their team alongside Smith, David Warner and Mitchell Starc, and Maddinson fits the bill after the batting fashion of Waugh or, in earlier years, Doug Walters. Smith believes he has been able to help coax some of Maddinson’s more consistent displays over the past couple of years, and firmly believes he can do so again for Australia, where the reward for this risk can be so much greater.Never was that better illustrated than three years ago, when Maddinson pummelled 181 from 142 balls for Australia A against Gloucestershire at Bristol while the tour vice-captain Smith, the captain Brad Haddin, the tour manager Rod Marsh and assistant coach Darren Lehmann looked on. It was an innings that prompted Scyld Berry to write the words: “Australian batting dead? No mate.”Marsh and others have kept Maddinson in their pocket since then, never quite trusting themselves to pick a player so given to bouts of obvious boredom and subsequent ruinous stroke choices. But the circumstances in Hobart were desperate enough to have the soon to resign chairman throwing up other options in conversation with Hohns and Waugh, and for Smith to gain a greater say in affairs than previously. A bit like the panel of Andrew Hilditch who bequeathed the likes of Smith, Warner, Nathan Lyon and Pat Cummins to their successors, Marsh’s men hoped to leave a better legacy than the misery of Bellerive.
