Australia head coach Andrew McDonald has backed veteran batter Usman Khawaja and his opening partner Marnus Labuschagne despite their poor form in the World Test Championship final defeat. Labuschagne, who made an amazing start to his Test career in 2019, has faced a rough patch for over a year. Since the start of 2024, he has averaged 26.71 in 13 Tests as well.
“He’s a big part of the future of the team. Anyone that averages 45 or 46 in Test cricket at that age is important,” McDonald said of Labuschagne. “We’ve got older players who are closer to the end than the start. We’ve got some younger players that are coming in, and you definitely want those guys that have, I think, 60-odd Test matches.”
He again shared, “If he can get his game in good order for the next four or five years, he can underpin that batting order. But at the moment, he’d be disappointed with the returns. He’s missed out on big scores. He threatened at the MCG, got a pair of 70s, and, you know, if they had been a pair of hundreds, the conversation shifts as well. But we’re confident that he could return to his best, and hence (that is) why we keep picking him. It is at what point do we stop picking him?
“I think most players across their journey get dropped at some point in time. I think he had a positive week here, where he worked on the right things and had a great prep. There’s no harder worker than Marnus. Now it’s really just about the returns. And at the moment, as I said, he’d be disappointed,” he further added.
While the 30-year-old Marnus Labuschagne still has time, Khawaja will turn 39 this December, in between the Ashes series, if selected. McDonald also said Khawaja is an “important player” and said that he is likely to remain in Australia’s plans for the all-important home Ashes later this year as well.
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“He’s on contract, he’s an important player,” McDonald said of Khawaja. “He gives us stability at his best at the top. And we like to look at our players at their best. No doubt, a couple of failures here and people then start to talk about maybe it’s the end. I don’t see an end date with the way he’s training, the way he’s preparing, the way he’s moving. He went back to Shield cricket, got 100 last [season]. So I think he’s got plenty of runs left in him. It’ll come down to his inner drive and the way he prepares. It was a bit the same with Davey as well. The way he moved, we saw some positives in that. We knew that the runs were around the corner. We feel as though Usman’s got a big part to play.”
However, Australia will begin a new WTC cycle with a three-match Test tour of the Caribbean, and as Pat Cummins said after the final at Lord’s, it feels like a fresh start as well. It also offers them a chance to reassess combinations, especially with slower surfaces likely against the West Indies as well.
“It’s always a combination and the connection between each series and the surfaces that you play on can be quite different,” Andrew McDonald said. “So you don’t want to play despite conditions, but you also want to understand where you’re heading. That can be a tricky balance. We’ve seen that in Sri Lanka around opening the batting with Travis Head on slower surfaces. What are we going to get in the Caribbean? We haven’t been there since 2016, so there’s a little bit of the unknown, but we feel as though we have got a squad that can cover all bases.”
“Will we get spinning conditions? We’ve got two spinners in the squad, so do we shift into our sort of spin line up in terms of the way that we play? And that goes for the batting order as well. I’d like to think that we’re being flexible around our options in the batting order. Other people are judging that and saying that’s unsettling. I think we’ve got a group that understands when we’re home, it looks a certain way. When we’re away, it can potentially shift,” Andrew McDonald concluded.
