Updated ,first published
Durban: Cameron Green is out of the first Test against South Africa and won’t be able to bowl for the entire series, opening the door for Cooper Connolly or Nic Maddinson for a possible call-up on what’s expected to be a turning pitch at Kingsmead this week.
Head coach Andrew McDonald confirmed Green was out of the series opener on Tuesday night, after suffering an abdominal injury while batting in the ODI series. McDonald added that if Green did play in the remaining two Tests, it would be for his batting alone.
“It is an odd one, it had our medical team scrambling,” McDonald said of Green’s abdominal strain suffered while batting, which is more common in tennis than cricket. “It’s not a rotational muscle, it’s a stabilising muscle … there is a path where he can play in this series.
“We’d be solely focused on getting him to return as a batter, we wouldn’t be putting that demand on him to return as a bowler, I think that would be too high risk.”
Recently turning 23, Connolly has been a consistent presence in Australian squads over the past 18 months, granted multiple opportunities to learn – and to fail – in foreign conditions as he moulds his game.
Connolly is likely up against the more seasoned Maddinson, 34, for a spot in the absence of Josh Inglis (broken finger).
Selectors George Bailey and McDonald will thus have a clear choice between youth and experience. The pair took a first look at the surface on Tuesday.
“If you look before [his cancer treatment], quality player, can bat at the top, can bat in the middle,” McDonald said of Maddinson. “We’re going to get challenged with spin, and those subcontinent tours we’ve had in the past, he’s been well and truly in our thoughts.
“It may not have been obvious for others, but we felt the player we needed to replace Josh Inglis, can bat at the top and bat in the middle.”
With his left-arm spin as a useful second string, Connolly has firm views about how he wants to play, and fellow left-hander Travis Head looms large in his thinking.
“He’s unbelievable. Over the last couple of years, I’ve watched him play Test cricket, and he’s been that aggressive and changed games. And that’s something I want to be,” Connolly said. “There might be time and a place where the game is asking something else, but I watch him a little bit and try to understand how he goes about it.
“We’re slightly different players, but that’s sort of how I want to approach my game. Similar to Trav, I want to take the game on. I want to score runs, I want to impose myself. I want to be aggressive. I want to put the bowlers back under pressure.
“Speaking to Trav over the last year and a bit, just understanding how he wants to go about it and how he thinks out there. I think Trav’s someone that stands out for me, how I want to play my game.”
Connolly was just 21 when he made his Test debut in Sri Lanka in early 2025, and at the time he was still wrestling with how to handle spin bowling in the initial phase of his innings. He’s used those experiences to learn, beginning a routine of making regular batting notes at home in Perth before each assignment.
“I’ll sit down at home in Perth … and write down what I want to achieve out of this,” he said. “I first started it before the [2026] IPL because I’d obviously had a tough period before then. It was just [contemplating] what do I want to get out of this, whether I’m playing or not playing. How can I come back a better cricketer?
“And if I play, what’s my method, and how do I want to do it? What are some key words that are going to help me approach every innings the same, so it’s not searching for things in every innings. It’s consistency throughout the whole series.
“I think I went in to Sri Lanka a little bit raw and trying to still play the same way, where it sometimes doesn’t work because it spins a little bit more, and you get beaten and stumped or something like that. Committing to a method, for me, in those conditions has been the big one.”
Tellingly, the routine caught the interest of white-ball skipper Mitchell Marsh, who told Connolly he wished he had been similarly fastidious as a younger player.
“‘Bison’ (Marsh) said to me ‘the one thing I regret is not writing down notes when I was your age because it’s something to look back on when things were going well’,” Connolly said. “Understanding that yeah, these things that you look back on and have helped you progress to the cricketer you are now, you look back and you go, OK, that’s how I played the game then, and you don’t lose that.
“That’s probably the one thing that stood out when Bison said that to me. I was like, yeah, that’s not a bad idea, and I’ve already been doing it, but it’s just something that sort of needed a little bit of reinforcing to understand that the older guys actually wish they did it when they were younger.”
Like Steve Smith 15 years ago, Connolly understands that his spin bowling might help him in a tight selection squeeze, but maintains that ultimately it will be his batting that flourishes.
“I see myself as a batting all-rounder,” he said. “I didn’t used to put a lot of time into it. I just thought left-arm spin was pretty easy, but there’s actually a bit more to spin bowling.”
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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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