Australia announced the squad on Friday (December 20) as the 19-year-old Sam Konstas was added to the squad for the final two Tests of the Border Gavaskar Trophy in place of Nathan McSweeney as well. Konstas scored twin tons in the opening round of the Sheffield Shield for New South Wales against South Australia earlier this year as well. He made headlines with another century in the two-day practice match in Canberra against India as well.
Chief Selector for Cricket Australia, George Bailey said, “You can say the way our top three are playing has been reasonably similar and we’d like the ability to throw something different at India off the back of that. If you look more broadly, I don’t necessarily think the top six has quite functioned to the level that we need in this series as a whole. Think Sam’s method, his style, is different to Nathan’s, different again to Beau’s and Josh’s as the other batting options within that team and we think they provide the options of a different look and a different make up for the XI come Boxing Day.”
Though McSweeney had been dropped, George Bailey reassured him that they still had faith in him. And, McSweeney faced Indian speedster Jasprit Bumrah, and was dismissed by him in four out of the six innings and he had a top score of 39 in the series as well. Bailey also mentioned that they picked up McSweeney due to his form in the lead-up to the series as well.
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“Nathan was disappointed and really the message to him was, much the same as at the start of the series, that we believe, and that hasn’t changed, that he has the ability and temperament to succeed at Test level but just given the way the series has played out, we want the option of throwing something different at India for this next Test,” he said. “In the lead-up to the series he was performing incredibly well. Think the key around that was his methodology and the way he plays, we believe doesn’t change to much wherever he’s coming in in the order. It hasn’t quite worked out as you’d like it do at the start, but it’s still very much the start of his career.”
None of the three top-order batters for Australia have scored over a hundred runs in the series, with Marnus Labuschagne being the highest scorer at 82. Meanwhile, senior batter Usman Khawaja has scored only 63 runs so far and has struggled against Bumrah too but Bailey said that there was no consideration of moving him from the squad.
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“You are always looking for your senior players to be the leaders in how you play. Specifically to Uz, with the value the left hander [brings] at the top of the order, there wasn’t a great deal of consideration of moving him. I guess Marn as the other part of the top three, he’s been on record saying he’d like to be scoring runs, we’d love for him to be scoring more runs, but back up what Andrew said post Perth, as much with Marn it’s about the method and intent as it is the outcome,” he added.
“You always hope to. Going back to the first point I made, the one thing you are constantly getting is new information, respecting a series or a tournament happens to be at whenever that player is in there. In an ideal world, you are getting individual performance and team performance which allows you to give those players time to grow,” George Bailey concluded.
