PAUL NEWMAN: Australia’s team selection for the Ashes is confirmation they are SPOOKED by Bazball
First blood to England.
How else to interpret Australia’s strange decision to name their squad for the World Test Championship final and only the first two Ashes Tests?
It’s not exactly a vote of confidence, more the act of a confused selection panel who’s been shocked by “Bazball.”
And it certainly isn’t a vote of confidence in David Warner, who has in fact just made the showpiece final against India at the Oval in June, a week before the Ashes begin to salvage his Test career.
That’s more of a slap in the face to a controversial but still important player.
David Warner has been included in Australia’s squad for the World Test Championship final against India at the Oval and the first two Ashes Tests
The veteran opener made scores of 1, 10 and 15 in a dismal run in India and has passed 50 just twice in his last 24 innings in Test cricket
Warner averages a modest 26.04 in 25 innings in England and although Australia retained the Ashes on the 2019 tour, he only averaged 9.5
It is believed that Warner will start the Ashes on June 16 if he manages to score points against India, but if he doesn’t then he is done.
But really, what would a Warner century or even 50 in the finale prove? He will have a very different attack with a very different Kookaburra ball in the Oval than what awaits him in Edgbaston.
Australia probably knows what Warner can do now.
Either they should have selected him for the full series as a destructive opener who could take on England in their new ultra-positive game, or they should have decided his woeful Ashes in 2019 when he was a walking Stuart Broad wicket and an average of only 9.5, which meant he couldn’t be picked.
By doing this they have not supported or fired him.
Meanwhile, Marcus Harris has been included in the squad as an alternative to Warner as Usman Khawaja’s opening partner, and Australia is certainly grateful to Gloucestershire for giving him match training in English conditions this early season with a Dukes ball.
Harris already has a century under his belt against Glamorgan.
By contrast, the folly of English and Welsh counties in signing Australians into an Ashes year is further exposed by the omission of Michael Neser, among others.
Pat Cummins’ team will take on India in the WTC finals at The Kia Oval on June 12
Led by Brendon McCullum (left) and Ben Stokes (right), England have won 10 of their last 12 Tests after winning one of their previous 17
The Aussies know Neser, who will be with Glamorgan, and others now left out, such as Cameron Bancroft, Peter Handscomb and Sean Abbott, will be country hardened and ready when they are needed from the third test.
‘The selectors should rejoice in the fact that they can call on Neser at any time,’ wrote respected Australian cricket writer Robert Craddock.
‘How England would love it if their reserves played Sheffield Shield on Ashes tours of Australia.’ Spot on.
So maybe the Aussies, with help from the provinces, didn’t get it so wrong after all.
*That’s where we were in this column last week calling the imminent arrival of Major League Cricket in the United States the biggest threat yet to English cricket from the inexorable rise of the franchises. But obviously we haven’t seen anything yet.
News is coming from Australia that owners of Indian Premier League clubs have been negotiating with Saudi Arabia for the past year over a new Twenty20 competition that will partner with the IPL and include leading Indian players. The prospect should make anyone who loves Test and all international cricket shiver.
A Saudi league would be even more destructive to cricket than the LIV tour to golf, as it would spell the end of the game as we know and love it.
An exaggeration? No, because it would allow the IPL along with an even richer league to finally complete what it is building towards, a world cricket revolution even bigger than the Kerry Packer circus in 1977.
The Saudi Arabian government has reportedly held talks with Indian Premier League owners in a bid that could change the game forever and spell the end of Test cricket.
Players like Jos Buttler (above) would be placed on 12 month contracts by IPL owners and would play all over the world for the franchises those owners control in other leagues
Players would be placed on 12 month contracts by IPL owners and would play all over the world for the franchises that those owners control in other leagues, just as Jofra Archer has been signed this year to Mumbai Indians and their new South African team MI capetown.
They would only be available for their country if their franchises allow it, which would mean no bilateral cricket and very few test series.
It is conceivable that only World Cups and the Ashes will remain and that is a grim prospect indeed. Even worse, it seems there’s no plausible way to stop it. Enjoy international cricket while you still can, because maybe it won’t be long now.
*From the new edition of the always excellent Wisden Cricketers Almanack comes a welcome solution to that most controversial subject ‘the Mankad’.
It’s a way of dismissal – chasing away the non-striker when they go backwards – that divides the game more than ever, with this correspondent being one of those who think it should have no place in all of cricket.
But Wisden editor and our own Lawrence Booth have the answer. The umpire must call ‘one short’ when a non-striker starts a run while out of his crease.
It’s perfect and, once it takes a side run, would end once and for all one of cricket’s most enduring controversies.