Australia Admit Top-Order Unsettled As Coach Hopes Sheffield Shield Will Provide Clarity

News18

6 days ago

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Australia's coach Andrew McDonald admitted uncertainty in their top-order despite a 3-0 win over West Indies. The Sheffield Shield will help decide the Ashes lineup.
Australia's head coach Andrew McDonald acknowledged that their top-order combinations in Tests remain uncertain despite a 3-0 series win over the West Indies. He noted that the initial rounds of the Sheffield Shield will provide clarity on who will be in contention for the crucial Ashes series later this year.
Although Australia triumphed in the Caribbean series, there is still significant debate over whether the opening pair of Sam Konstas and Usman Khawaja will be retained for the first Ashes Test in November. Khawaja scored 117 runs with an average of 19.50, whereas Konstas managed only 50 runs at an average of 8.33.
'I think it leaves (Konstas) where everyone else is in terms of Shield cricket at the start of the season. We're not going to shy away from the fact that will be big for certain individuals to go about their work, put some scores on the board, and then for us to look at what we need against England.
'It feels as though we're still a little bit unsettled in terms of what our combinations look like at the top of the order with the way that the performances have gone here (against West Indies). There's a lot of cricket still to come to be able to gather that information," McDonald said on SEN Radio.
Marnus Labuschagne, who was dropped for the West Indies series, along with Cameron Bancroft, Marcus Harris, and Matthew Renshaw, will now be under consideration for Australia's Ashes top-order combination. Nathan McSweeney and Jake Weatherald, both of whom scored fifties in Australia A's first red-ball match against Sri Lanka A in Darwin, may also be contenders.
'Shield cricket, it feels like it's going to be the same as the start of last year where the microscope will be there for certain individuals and what happens in those games will have a great connection to the first Test in Perth.
'If the performances are at a certain level, I still think that there's always going to be discussion and debate as to what our top order looks like in Australia against England; it's a totally different opposition, they play differently, and the surfaces are different," added McDonald.
He further expressed that the West Indies tour will be a substantial learning experience for young Konstas. 'He'll take away some information that will accelerate his growth forward. The exposure across the series is going to create some great opportunities for him to go away and reflect and start to gather what it looks like for him.
'He's a highly talented player. His skill set over time, I think we will see the real Sam Konstas and at the moment he's juggling with his aggressive nature, he's juggling his technique and the way he really wants to go about playing it."
'But when you've got up and down and seaming wickets, it can force you into those corners a lot quicker than some surfaces that are batter friendly, which we were (initially) expecting to get here.
'We believe he's got more layers than just being that ultra-aggressive, almost what you call a disruptor at the top of the order, and hence why those two Tests (against India last summer) then extended out to the WTC (final) and then some opportunities in the West Indies.
'He's had a small setback here in difficult conditions, and so did the rest of the top order as well. We see him as a player that we'll be using going forward; it will just be a matter of when," concluded McDonald.
With IANS Inputs
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