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Perth: Australia’s selectors have swiftly ruled out a home Test debut for Lance Morris, effectively declaring the side to face Pakistan after the national team’s first training session in the west.
Mitchell Johnson’s latest column in The Sunday Times – characterised as another “strike” against the Australian team by the masthead in which it was published – pressed hard for WA-product Morris to debut as the fastest bowler in the country while arguing that an ageing team needed to be recast this summer.
Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitch Marsh of Australia pose with the World Cup trophy.Credit: Getty Images
But head coach Andrew McDonald wasted little time expressing the view that Morris, Cameron Green, and Scott Boland would be in reserve this week unless injuries emerged over the next three days.
He also reinforced the selectors’ strong view that the advent of the World Test Championship, played over two-year cycles, had intensified the need to pick a nation’s best team at any given moment, rather than leaning too much towards blue sky thinking about distant future assignments.
“Lance put a few under notice there, in particular Marnus [Labuschagne], so it was a good contest, [a] good hit out, and all the quicks have returned in good order,” McDonald said. “In terms of what that means for selection we’ll work through that over the next couple days, but I think it’ll look the same as what it has before.
“We’re there to pick the best XI we can at any given time and I think the World Test Championship has put a premium on every Test match. It’s hard to make, we missed out on the first cycle of it by over-rate of all things, so it’s always tight to get into that final and every Test match counts.
“We adopt that philosophy and we’ll keep that simple across the time myself, George [Bailey] and Tony Dodemaide are making those decisions.”
Mitchell Marsh, a jovial presence at a training session that also featured a visit from former Australian captain Kim Hughes alongside his grandson, played with characteristic freedom in the centre wicket net against Australia’s pace bowlers, and will have licence to attack Pakistan, much as he did in the final three Ashes Tests.
McDonald deflected any talk of Marsh ultimately replacing David Warner at the top of the batting order, having previously led to speculation about Marnus Labuschagne being promoted with his comments in a radio interview. There is no realistic prospect of Labuschagne being moved from three.
“On the back of a strong Ashes campaign it’s likely he’ll start in that number-six position, so [that’s] something to get excited about for the Perth fans, looking to see him play that aggressive role at six,” McDonald said of Marsh. “We want him to have that intent he has shown in previous Test matches and one-day cricket, so [we’re] really excited by what he can bring with both bat and ball and just around the group in general. He’s a person we love having around.”
One player who has no plans to declare a Test retirement date is Nathan Lyon, who will rebalance the attack considerably after he was desperately missed in the final three Ashes Tests. McDonald stated that Lyon was one of the world’s most underrated cricketers, and the team now understood exactly what was lost in his absence.
“I think in the last series they played it was a more up-tempo brand and they’ll try to put more pressure on the bowling unit, so I think we’ll see a little bit of that. But, like anything, if we execute with the ball it’s going to be difficult to be able to maintain that over long periods. We’re not sure of the way they’ll play – they’ll signal their intent from the first ball out there.
Lance Morris training at the WACA on Sunday.Credit: Getty Images
“I’m glad someone noticed the fact we were missing him in the last three Test matches. It was a huge loss when he went down, it destabilised what we’d normally do and he’s been down the other end to those quicks for 100 Tests on the dot,” he said.
“So important to the way we operate, he can tie up an end, he can be aggressive when he wants to be, but he makes that attack work and when he wasn’t there we went through some periods of instability, and we had to find different ways of doing things, and at times it looked as though we could manage that, at other times we didn’t.
“I think he flies under the radar in conversations at times – we’re happy to have him every time he plays. I think people will reflect when he does finally hang up the boots [just] how important he was to this bowling attack. Internally we recognise that, externally sometimes he’s not recognised as much as he should be.”
Expected Australia XI: David Warner, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith, Travis Head, Mitchell Marsh, Alex Carey, Pat Cummins (capt), Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood.
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