Not playing any red ball cricket won’t hold selectors back from picking white ball stars for upcoming Test series
White ball form could yet provide the basis for inclusion in Test squads on the subcontinent for the likes of Mitch Marsh and Glenn Maxwell who have been locked in one format by the packed cricket schedule.
That could include the upcoming tour of Pakistan in March which Jhye Richardson will miss so the fast bowler can “build up the way he needs to build up” after injuring himself during the Ashes series.
Australian selection chairman George Bailey named Marsh and Maxwell as two players among a “handful” who have the “skillets” to transfer from one form of the game to the other easier than others.
With tours of Sri Lanka and India also in 2022, subcontinental specialists like Maxwell, who starred in the Indian premier League last year and made his only Test century in India, could be considered.
Marsh and Maxwell both missed all Sheffield Shield cricket before Christmas to be part of Australia’s T20 World Cup win, and are likely to miss more red ball games when the domestic season resumes amid ongoing national duties.
Bailey said the decision to leave Marsh out of a five-match T20 series against Sri Lanka next month was in part duo to the potential for more opportunities beyond white ball cricket and “prepare for Pakistan”.
“There’s a number of players, Glenn Maxwell, Mitch Marsh, Ash Agar, Mitch Swepson are a handful of guys off the top of my head who just through the nature of scheduling played a lot of one format and not a lot of the other,” Bailey said.
“But they are still working hard at their game and the three formats are incredibly different but there are some skillets that cross over so if the opportunity arises it certainly won’t preclude us from picking them.”
Marsh, who played his last Test during the 2019 Ashes, has taken his heroics at the T20 World Cup, where he was player of the match in the final, into the BBL scoring 342 runs in seven innings including a hundred.
Maxwell, one of only three Australians to have an international century in all three forms of the game, smashed the highest score in BBL history, 154 not out, as one of two centuries among his 468 runs for the Melbourne Stars this season.
Fast bowler Richardson has been selected for the upcoming five-match T20 series against Sri Lanka but he will be rested for the three-Test tour of Pakistan, which begins in March.
The 25-year-old, who made his Test return during the Ashes and snared 5-42 in the second innings against England at the Adelaide Oval before an injury to his left foot and shin kept him out for the rest of the series.
He said discussions around him playing for “the next 10 years” were behind the decision to rest him from the Pakistan tour.
“These conversations have always been positive, there‘s never been a negative word said regardless,” Richardson said.
“It‘s making sure we’re in the best place possible to play for the next 10 years, and making sure the body is right and 100 per cent moving forward.
“It would be exciting to play Test cricket in the subcontinent, it‘s a big challenge.
“But for me now the focus is most certainly on the Sri Lankan series with another T20 World Cup coming up.”