r/CricketAus

AMA: I'm not George Bailey.

This is a joke, but I will be answering as George Bailey.

Renshaw’s batting innings was phenomenal, and it showed how necessary it is to have a confident, patient and competent number 5 who can bat with the tail. Taking that into account, what do you guys think our batting lineup should be when all of our options are fit?

I’d be looking at something like:

1. Head
2. Whichever of Konstas, Kellaway, Hunt, Weatherald, Maddinson or Bancroft make the best case in Shield cricket
3. Smith (Already effectively batting 3 thanks to Marnus)
4. Green (Think his performance in the Bangladesh test series looked really mature and could be a turning point for him)
5. Renshaw (Showed he is the perfect guy to build a stable middle order around)
6. Connelly (Can bat at multiple tempos, technique looks pretty solid, left arm spin is handy)
7. Carey (I like him at 7 personally because I think he’s good with the tail)
8. Cummins
9. Starc
10. Lyon
11. Hazlewood

Rest of squad: Boland, spare opening batter, Peake (looks good and could benefit from being around the test squad), Rocciocholi, Fergus O’Neill (With how test pitches are trending in the green seamer direction, O’Neill’s lack of pace is no longer such a big weakness. If Ollie Robinson is currently the number 2 rated bowler in the world according to the ICC, Ferg can be a test bowler)

What do you guys think?

Good to have Russell Jackson back writing about sport 👏

‘Even in this era of "false threes" and result pitches, the linchpin positions in the top order should surely not be devalued so casually.’

A good shipping line doesn’t send veteran steamers into the worst of winter and hope for the best. It builds the next generation of ships while the old captains are still on the bridge. Anything else is sailing on hope and trusting the weather to hold.

By recalling NSW veteran Nic Maddinson into Australia’s Test squad to face South Africa, selectors have made that gamble.

Australia has South Africa and India away, and an Ashes tour of England next year. So we can’t afford to lean on hope.

Even if Maddinson makes runs, his selection plugs a gap and builds nothing. The batting is vulnerable, and the bowling again rests on Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon staying fit. One injury and we’d be exposed.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a great fan of Nic’s and always thought he should have played more Tests. But that window closed a decade ago. He was one of the most gifted players to emerge from Australia’s 2010 under-19 World Cup winners in New Zealand, alongside Mitch Marsh, Hazlewood, Adam Zampa and Kane Richardson. He struck the ball beautifully, bowled clever left-arm spin and had one of the best arms I’ve seen in youth cricket. His future looked secure.

Instead, he became a casualty of a broken first-class structure. I remember several seasons when he started well in the Sheffield Shield, then lost momentum when the Big Bash split the competition into two five-game blocks. Give him 10 straight Shield matches and he could easily have made four or five hundreds in a season, and grown into a long-term Test opener.

The problem is wider than one player. In fairness to the selectors, very few young batters get a sustained run of first-class cricket. The BBL break sees to that, and most states have held on to the stalwarts, believing experienced hands give them a better shot at the trophy than blooding kids.

State coaches are paid to fill the cabinet and protect their jobs, not to produce the next generation.

That has to change. A state job should be a working interview for the Australian head coach’s position, and states and premier clubs should be rewarded for the number of Test players they develop.

The cost of getting this wrong is bigger than a few lost matches.

If a talented 19-year-old sees the door to Test cricket shut until he’s nearly 30, he will look at the T20 circuit and ask why he should wait. We are teaching our best young players that Tests are not where the future is.
The same disconnect exists at the top. Cricket is the core business Cricket Australia has to get right. If the cricket is strong, the commercial side looks after itself because crowds and broadcasters follow fresh stars. If the cricket is weak, no amount of corporate governance will fix it.

CA’s board should be rooted in the game. I’d have four-fifths of the directors nominated by the states, plus a couple of independents for financial and governance expertise.

The objection is that state delegates will protect their interests. For most of our history the states did the job we needed because their interests and Australia’s were the same: produce the best players. What matters is what those directors are rewarded for.

Tie state funding to how many players a state develops for the national side, and parochialism becomes a reason to back young talent instead of hoarding veterans. The people running the game then have a direct stake in its long-term health.

As a former selector I’m reluctant to second-guess the panel. They know far more about the players than I do, and we can only judge the process. A selector’s job is to pick a side to win, but that has to be balanced against the future. No team is a finished product.

Australia has been here before, and we got it right. In the mid-to-late 1980s, in a lean time, Allan Border’s side blooded Steve Waugh, David Boon, Ian Healy, Mark Taylor and Bruce Reid. They lost plenty, then won the 1987 World Cup and the 1989 Ashes. Nobody remembers the matches that rebuild cost, but most remember the team it produced.

Experience is also misunderstood. A player with 10 seasons of first-class cricket has that experience only if he has learned and improved over a decade. If he’s still making the same technical errors, he has had one season’s experience 10 times.

We used to laugh at the English selectors for insisting a player needed 10 years of county cricket before being Test match ready. Regularly they picked prolific county players who had adapted to the lower level so well that they couldn’t step up. The sooner you pick someone with the talent for Tests, the sooner he adapts to what the game demands.

The usual worry is that young players get burnt. Some will. But a home series against Bangladesh is the cheapest place to find out, and a dropped player can come back.

Maddinson’s recall proves that. Australia missed a golden chance to blood one or two young batters with genuine futures. By declining, the selectors drove deeper into a cul-de-sac that will be harder to get out of when the change has to come. It’s also best to bring young batters in while Steve Smith is still in the side, so they can learn from a master.

How are we going to find the next Ricky Ponting or Steve Waugh before they turn 21 if we’re too gun-shy to give a couple of them a go at home?

This is not aimed at individuals. It comes from wanting Australian cricket to stay successful. This team has peaked, and if the selectors stay risk-averse, they will lose their battle with father time.

Unless Australia stops patching up the old steamers and starts laying new keels, the winter storms ahead will show how dangerous it is to fly on a wing and a prayer.

Cricinfo article: “Bailey: Maddinson call-up is not disrespectful to first-class cricket”

Cricket.com.au’s article is titled: “Durban turner, versatility main factors in Maddinson pick: Bailey”

The anticipation of a turning Durban pitch and the probable absence of two of their most versatile players to injury (Green and Inglis) were the major factors behind Nic Maddinson's bolt from the blue to South Africa, according to chief selector George Bailey.

“I think probably the challenge for people is to get past what he [Maddinson] has had to go through in the last 12 or 18 months," Bailey said. "For people who are trying to run down the list of last year's run-scorers, that's going to be a challenge for them. For the time and place that we are in right now, the conditions we're about to face, and the moving parts that we've had, he's just deemed the best fit. I don't think there's a long list of players that provide that flexibility who can genuinely say that they can do both of those roles… I don't think you can view this one and say it's disrespectful to state cricket because he hadn't played last year – it's not like (Maddinson) was sitting out because he said the wickets looked green or (too) challenging."

From December 2018 to March 2024, Maddinson averaged 52.37 in the Sheffield Shield. In that time, Maddinson also stepped away for mental health reasons, broke his arm after being hit by speedster Jhye Richardson and tore his ACL – all before his testicular cancer diagnosis: "He's had some incredible bad luck," said Bailey. "It just seems like the cricket world has conspired against him”. He endured a lean 2025-26 season after returning to his native NSW averaging 17.80, although he was impacted by fatigue understood to be related to his subsequent cancer diagnosis. But despite only playing grade cricket, BBL and the One-Day Cup since last March, Bailey had no doubt he would up to the physical demands of Test cricket: “He's a player that, when he's been at his best, I think his cricket ability stacks up as well as anyone”.

On the eve of a low-key tour match in Potchefstroom, Bailey explained Maddinson was also brought in for his perceived strength against spin, against which he averages 47.97 in first-class cricket (per CricViz): “Not to dismiss his work against quick bowling, but I think he's a very strong player of spin. And probably from that one-day (international) wicket, looking at their squad a little bit, I think it's half an expectation that's probably what we're going to get hit with in Durban.”

Cameron Green's lower abdominal strain, unusual enough for medicos to be sent scrambling to find relevant comparisons, along with the loss of their two-in-one reserve Josh Inglis, were the triggers for one of the bigger selection shocks in recent memory.

After selectors decided they would need two separate players to come in, Bailey said his batting replacement became a search "ultimately for who we thought had the most flexibility to be able to do something at the very top of the order… but (can) also can do it in the middle and is a very strong player of spin.”

A week out from the first Test, Green was limited to walking slow laps around the JB Marks Oval in Potchefstroom, bouncing a Sherrin, and was observed not being comfortable as he collected a ball. Greeny was expected to resume bowling in the upcoming 2-day tour match against a Cricket South Africa Invitational XI starting on Saturday. But now, he would appear in doubt to play at all in the South Africa Tests, where he was set to resume the No.5 berth he thrived in against Bangladesh. Medical staff were still determining what his recovery timelines would be for both batting and bowling. The strain, suffered while the allrounder batted in the third ODI and coming only minutes after he had copped a ball to the bladder, adds to Green's injury woes – he is also nursing a separate shoulder complaint that has dogged him since the Top End Tests. "It's a unique enough injury that even our staff were saying, we're going to go look at some other cases to see if we can get some more information on functionality with it, how long it takes to be fully healed, and the difference between batting and bowling," Bailey said.

Inglis, meanwhile, will have a further scan on his fractured finger in a week's time when a call will be made on whether he returns to the squad
ahead of the second Test.

Cooper Connolly shapes as a logical replacement, but Bailey's suggestion the 23-year-old is currently seen as more of a middle-order prospect, compared to Maddinson whose extensive experience both opening and batting further down won him his unexpected call-up, means that many combinations are possible.

Bailey confirmed Mitch Marsh, who has retired from domestic red-ball cricket, would have been in contention for a Test comeback had he not been committed to heading home after the ODIs due to the pending birth of his second child. While selectors had also considered Kurtis Patterson, if he had not suffered an untimely groin injury while fielding for NSW. Over the past three Shield seasons, the only players to average above 40 who are not in the Test squad are Patterson, the recently-dropped Jake Weatherald and Jason Sangha who is playing for Australia A. Other contenders like Australia A batters Nathan McSweeney (36.29 over that three-season stretch), Peter Handscomb (35.26), Sam Konstas (34.92), Campbell Kellaway (32.72), as well as recent white-ball debutant Ollie Peake (24.75), have also hardly banged the door down.

Bailey added that he and fellow selector Tony Dodemaide, who is on duty with the Australia A side in India, had spoken to a number of players overlooked to explain their reasoning. Maddinson had not been considered for the A side, but Bailey reiterated the different aims of that tour: "l've said this to the group and a number of guys that didn't get picked, there's a dual purpose to that [tour]," Bailey said. "There's very much, for some, an eye to what potentially could be happening in January and February [against India] but for some there's also a journey of (navigating) how difficult it is to play over there.'

Maddinson, who is flying out on Saturday morning, is not expected to arrive in time for the tour match which also starts on Saturday (evening, Australian time), and will instead join the squad in Durban. Sam Harper - whose first call-up to a Test squad to replace Inglis would ordinarily have been headline-grabbing in itself - departed India on Friday, and is more likely to play in the tour game.

Australia are set to firmly dictate the terms in their tour match, having already chosen to bowl first, while Bailey confirmed bowlers’ workloads would be carefully managed and Australia could be permitted to rotate batters through multiple times.

Their opponents, the CSA Invitational XI, will feature Neil Brand and Lesego Senokwane as the only two internationally capped players in their 13-man squad.

Solid article on Smudge