Top order batting – Pat Cummins asked his batting order to get through a tricky first couple of hours on a fresh pitch in Darwin and they were completely unable to find a way to do so against a diligent but far from fearsome Bangladesh attack. Jake Weatherald’s perpetual motion at the crease speaks of technical tweaks but also nerves, and it is tough to see him keeping his place in Mackay.
Marnus Labuschagne has already been dropped and recalled once in the past year, but is still struggling to find his best. Then there’s Travis Head and the question of his best position. Former opener Matthew Hayden was one seasoned voice to call for Matt Renshaw and Sam Konstas at the top, with Head moving to three.
Tellingly, Cummins spoke not of a one-off problem but of a trend, meaning that the team’s batting difficulties will be the chief topic of internal conversation this week. He was also open about the selectors’ ability to make change: “Every Aussie Test we do you can kind of pick whatever, it’s not a World Cup squad. You’ve got a lot of available guys who are ready to go.”
As Alyssa Healy put it on Fox Cricket: “It’s almost like they’ve underestimated themselves a little bit, the Bangladeshis. I mean, the whole of Australia probably did as well, but it’s almost like their humble approach has worked for them. We’ve got carried away with how big this summer is, but this is a wake-up call for Australia. Probably what they needed as well, after breezing through last summer.”
Nathan Lyon – In his first game back from hamstring surgery, 38-year-old Lyon was ineffective, certainly relative to the Bangladesh spinners, and also dropped a vital catch. There is no doubt Australia will need Lyon’s skills in India next year, but questions must be asked about whether he is an automatic selection, either ahead of Scott Boland or also the younger left-arm spinner Matt Kuhnemann.
Meanwhile, Lyon needs to regain his ability to deceive batsmen in the air – Bangladesh had few problems reading his length here, despite a helpful breeze at times.
Cummins said of Boland: “With Scotty, we all know how good he is, so we’ll turn up in Mackay, have a look at the pitch and work out your best bowling group. But with someone like Scotty in the squad you’re always trying to find a way to fit him in, he’s that good.”
Domestic pitches – Something an excellent Darwin surface exposed was how Bangladesh’s batters were better equipped to keep out good balls and bat time, a theme that runs well down the ranks into the Sheffield Shield. Partly this is because of a preponderance of grassy result pitches that make life difficult for batters and a little too easy for seamers.
A topic of conversation at a recent Cricket Australia summit in Brisbane, it’s an issue that Head has highlighted the difficulty of: “You can sit outside and say we want a great balance between bat and ball, but if you ask the states and the boards and who runs the show, they’ll say we want to win Shields, so I don’t think they’d care less on what it looks like, they want performance and they want to win.”
Talent pipeline – A major reason Australia are fielding their oldest ever Test team is a high level of selection scepticism about the younger talent coming through, something backed up by modest Shield aggregates in recent summers.
Based on those figures, there is no-one better available, but it will be up to the selectors to make some calculated gambles that go beyond pure statistics. Bangladesh provided a good reminder of that by how 25-year-old Tanzid Hasan (first-class batting average 39) and 26-year-old Hasan Mahmud (bowling average 28) seized their opportunities.
Succession plan – Australia’s huge allotment of Tests over the next 12 months leaves open the question of whether the current regime will change out of exhaustion as much as anything else next year. But the conversations need to start now, and in some cases they already have.
Head coach Andrew McDonald’s deal expires at the end of 2027, while Cummins’ captaincy tenure is also of uncertain duration. It may be easier to replace McDonald with one of Ryan Harris, Adam Voges or Tim Paine, but it is also a concern that Cummins’ stand-in remains the 37-year-old Steve Smith, whose career has operated on a series by series basis for several years.
Daniel Brettig is The Age’s chief cricket writer and the author of several books on cricket.Connect via X.From our partners
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