Former Australian cricketer Mark Waugh expressed his take on Australian team management not taking bold calls while dropping players during the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy against India, saying that the team is “not worrying about the future” as much with the ICC World Test Championship final experience at stake, Fox Sports reported. The series is level 1-1 as both teams head to Melbourne for the Boxing Day Test starting from December 26 onwards. Despite poor form, experienced players like Marnus Labuschagne (82 runs in three matches at an average of 16.40 with one fifty), Usman Khawaja (63 runs in three matches at an average of 12.60), and Mitchell Marsh (69 runs in three matches at an average of 13.80) have not been dropped for the next two Tests.
Speaking as quoted by Fox Sports, Waugh said, “I think they have picked the team on winning these last two Test matches.”
“They are not worrying about the future as much. You always keep an eye on the future, but this is a huge series and you have got the World Test Championship, that carrot dangling away as well.”
“So I think the selectors, they are thinking about the MCG Test and the SCG Test. What is our best team to win those two Test matches?,” he concluded his point.
Waugh said that Australia needs some firepower at the top of the order and cannot drop their experienced stars so dropping Nathan McSweeney, who could not score touch 20-run mark in six innings so far and had best score of 39, was a “process of elimination”.
“And they think they need a bit more firepower at the top of the order with the bat, maybe. I mean, you could not really drop one of the more experienced players, so it is probably Nathan McSweeney just through process of elimination, actually,” he said.
Hussey also questioned why Australia made a decision to drop McSweeney despite being dominant after a one-sided loss at Perth in the first Test.
“It is another reason why it is an interesting call and a tough call is that I feel as though, okay, India totally outplayed Australia in the first Test,” Hussey explained.
“But since then, I feel as though Australia have dominated the Test series, so I do not know, I was surprised.”
“I was shocked when they made the call, but it is a positive move to try and be more aggressive at the top of the order,” he concluded.
Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Sean Abbott, Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Travis Head (vc), Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Sam Konstas, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Jhye Richardson, Steve Smith (vc), Mitchell Starc, Beau Webster
India squad: Rohit Sharma (c), Jasprit Bumrah (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Devdutt Padikkal, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant, Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar. Reserves: Mukesh Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed, Yash Dayal.
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