Former Australian captain and opener Mark Taylor had his say on the struggles of Australian selectors to find a suitable replacement to David Warner. (AP/File)
While the talk in Australian cricketing circles have been about Usman Khawaja’s opening partner in the first Test of the Border-Gavaskar trophy with names of 25-year-old Nathan McSweeney and Marcus Harris tipped to don the role, former Australian captain and opener Mark Taylor had his say on the struggles of Australian selectors to find a suitable replacement to David Warner. Taylor, who played in 104 Test matches and a total of 253 First Class matches in his career, had put the blame on selectors going for white-ball form in place of red-ball form in domestic circuit.
On being asked during Wide World of Sports’ Outside The Rope about the skill of opening the batting being diminished, Taylor expressed his views on Australian cricket’s latest conundrum. “It certainly was, but… these days you’re not getting the upbringing we used to have in my time. Going back to the mid-80s, you played X amount of grade games, then you moved into the state team where I think I played something like 40 Sheffield Shield games, opening the batting against quality bowlers, against the Australian bowlers. Then you got a chance to play Test cricket. Now we’re almost picking our Test team not just from Shield form, but from how a guy goes in County cricket, or how he might have gone in the recent one-day series, or T20s,” Taylor told Wide World of Sports’ Outside The Rope.
While McSweeney, who averages 38.38 in 33 First Class matches in his career, made 14 runs in Australia A’s first innings against India A in the second unofficial Test being played at Melbourne, Marcus Harris played a knock of 74 runs to put his case forward for the opener’s slot. Harris’s First Class average is also below 40 with him having an average of 39.62. Harris’s Test career average is 25.29 with only three half-centuries in 14 test matches and Taylor wants the selectors to consider red-ball form seriously.
“Selectors would not look at white-ball cricket as an indicator for red-ball cricket, but now they have to because there is so much fragmentation of international cricket. So it is a little bit harder to pick. (Usman Khawaja) wasn’t an opener early on in his career, Justin Langer wasn’t an opener… and a lot of openers, like Matty Renshaw, he’s actually gone down the order now. So players are moving around all over the place, so it’s not easy for selectors to get a gauge on who actually wants to open the batting, who wants to be a full-time opener.” said Taylor.
Former Australian captain Ian Chappell too shared his views on the issue. “If you walk out to open the batting and in your head you’re thinking ‘I don’t want to do this job’, it’s not a good frame of mind,” Chappell said while talking with Wide World of Sports’ Outside The Rope.
