western australia – CaughtOutCricket

Promising youngsters Cameron Green and Will Pucovski have served up numbers that demanded their inclusion in Australia’s extended Test squad to face India this summer.

Victorian Will Pucovski has a thirst for scoring big hundreds. (Photo credit: Kelly Defina/Getty Images)

In spite of the global pandemic and the uncertainly that comes with it, the clouds appear to be lifting in Australian cricket with the recent news that supporters will be allowed back into the stadiums for the upcoming summer.

After a succession of limited overs fixtures which begin in Canberra and Sydney later this month, the highly anticipated Test series with India will commence with a day/night match starting in Adelaide on December 17th.

Heading into the home summer there are currently just two names on the lips of all Australian cricket supporters. And no, it isn’t the obvious household names of a David Warner, Steve Smith or Pat Cummins (who have all recently been starring for their respective IPL franchises) it’s a pair of youngsters who have been tearing up the early rounds of the Sheffield Shield in Adelaide.

Nothing gets fans more excited than electrifying up-and-coming talent standing tall and demanding selection for their national side and its looks like Australian cricket is set to unearth a couple of gems in the coming months.

Western Australian Cameron Green, a 21-year-old allrounder who bats in the middle order and bowls quick right-arm outswingers, and Victorian Will Pucovski, 22, a classy top order batsman who has a thirst for big hundreds.

The duo have done enough to impress coach Justin Langer and his fellow selectors Trevor Hohns and George Bailey who named them in an extended Test squad for the four-match series with India. Now both have a solid chance of receiving a Baggy Green by the summer’s end.

Despite both men making their first-class debut within weeks of each other as far back as February 2017, they have been restricted to just 22 and 19 appearances respectively.

Pucovski, a standout performer for both Victoria and Australia at various youth levels, has experienced a combination of ongoing concussion and mental health issues which have limited his action to just 22 matches for Victoria.

In fact, he’s suffered a staggering eight separate concussions in just six years – the first of which occurred during a high school game of Australian rules football and confined him to six months away from education.

After being selected for a CA XI against the touring English in late 2017, he announced himself to the Shield with 188 against Queensland in just his second match before scoring his first double hundred the following season with 243 against Western Australia despite struggling with personal issues at the time.

Just months later he was close to receiving full Australian honours. A Test debut against Sri Lanka loomed large, however, Kurtis Patterson pipped him to the post after back-to-back hundreds in a pre-series tour match.

Strong off the pads and happy to flay any width outside of the off-stump, the right-hander has been in scintillating form during two matches for his state this summer.

Having previously made a name for himself in the middle order, only recently has he taken to opening the batting and the results have been astounding. In three innings against South Australia and Western Australia he’s produced scores of 255no, 202 and 38.

In doing so he became the first batsman to record successive double hundreds in the Shield since Dene Hills in 1997/98 and what’s more remarkable is they were his first professional innings since early February.

Promising allrounder Cameron Green has been compared to a young Ricky Ponting (Photo Credit: Getty Images)

Green, on the other hand, has been described as the best young Australian batsman since Ricky Ponting emerged in the mid-nineties by former Australian captain, selector and talent manager Greg Chappell.

However, like Pucovski, Green certainly hasn’t had it all his own way. And similar to many young fast bowlers he’s suffered his fair of injuries – noticeably stress fractures of the back – which kept him away from the game for the whole of the 2017/18 summer and have limited his bowling workload ever since.

However, he’s now averaging a touch under 50 batting at No.4 for Western Australia, and (when fully fit) can open the bowling with speeds of 85mph + all delivered at a towering height of two metres. His average with the ball is an impressive 22.53 with his 30 wickets including 5-24 as a 17-year-old debutant against current selector George Bailey’s Tasmanian side and 6-30 also against Tasmania fifteen months later.

Despite featuring predominantly as a bowler in his early Shield days, his batting talent has been evident from a young age. No more so than when he scored a match-winning first-grade knock of 116 for Perth-based Subiaco-Floreat before his seventeenth birthday.

Batting at number eight – having been temporarily advised to give up bowling – he scored his first Shield against Queensland a year ago when he backed up an unbeaten first-innings 87 with a match-saving 121no in the second dig. Further hundreds arrived against Tasmania (158no) and South Australia (126) before he scored a magnificent 197 off 438 balls against a strong New South Wales attack that included Test spinner Nathan Lyon last month.

To back up his big hundred he’s also produced a pair of 56’s against South Australia and Victoria whilst also impressing in his limited return with the ball despite only two wickets.

His all-round package could see him become a world-class middle order batsman who can also contribute as a major force with the ball, something that predecessors Shane Watson and Mitchell Marsh could never fully achieve.

Can Tim Paine shoehorn either man into the Test side?

Pucovski has been muted as a possible replacement for Joe Burns at the top of the order. But despite his successes against South Australia and Western Australia, he has only opened the batting in three first-class innings.

He will get another opportunity to stake his claim to open alongside David Warner in the first Test – with both himself and Burns pencilled in to play two warmup matches against the Indian tourists in Sydney early next month.

The smarter money could still be that incumbent Burns – nine years Pucovski’s senior – is given every chance to again prove his worth despite just 57 runs in five innings for Queensland this summer.

Green is seen as more of a long-term all-round option in the middle order, likely at either five or six. But with current mainstays Travis Head and Matthew Wade both scoring freely during the opening rounds of the Shield, it’s more likely that he’ll be introduced into the ODI side first and will have to bide his time around the red-ball bubble whilst soaking up more valuable experience.

Veteran batsman’s runscoring feats have become boom or bust throughout his seven-year Test career.

Not since Shane Watson last pulled on the green and gold jersey in March 2016 has there been a more divided figure in Australian cricket than Shaun Marsh.

Poor form and injuries have blighted Marsh’s career to the extent that he and younger brother Mitchell are now seen as figures of fun to certain sections of the Australian public for their perceived wealth of opportunities and lack of runs.

It’s been almost seven years since Marsh sr. first played a home Test series against India. Across six innings in that 2011/12 summer he scored just 17 runs and averaged 2.42. Eleven of those runs were scored in one knock.

For a number 11 those would be disappointing returns. But for a top order batsman they were outright disastrous and he subsequently paid the price by being axed from the side for more than two years.

Unfortunately for Marsh the aforementioned series wasn’t an anomaly either. His seven-year and 34-Test career has habitually fluctuated from one extreme to another. The big hundreds are regularly followed by a string of low scores and vice versa.

Since debuting in the hills of Kandy as a 28-year-old with nearly ten years of first-class experienced behind him, 40.98% of his Test innings have ended with single figure scores. That’s 25 out of 61 innings that have concluded before they’ve reached ten.

To reiterate the all or nothing nature of his batting, when he does go past ten his average balloons close to 60 – almost 25 runs more than his Test career average of 35.28. He has also logged ten ducks in 61 innings which is just one less than Allan Border recorded across his 265 innings in the Baggy Green.

While it’s inevitable that all top order batsmen – Marsh has batted all across the top six – will occasionally be dismissed cheaply throughout their careers, to fail to make double figures in over 40% of your innings shows a batsman who struggles to tough it out when confidence is down.

As a result, he’s been dropped from the side on numerous occasions, but has still managed to outlive the coaching spans of Tim Nielsen, Mickey Arthur and Darren Lehmann. Now he’s reunited with his former Western Australia coach and mentor Justin Langer who took over the top job in May.

The pair have worked together in Perth since late 2012 with Langer, himself a former international lefthander, often helping Marsh iron out technical deficiencies in his game. Having a close ally at the helm will no doubt help to prolong his future in the side.

At his best he’s got the dreamy cover drives, the powerful cut shots and the all-round elegant stroke play to revival the finest. But, and there’s certainly always a but with Shaun Marsh, to the contrary he can also be found scratching around like an old hen uncertain of where his next run will come from.

In a modern era of increasing technology and data analysis, it’s easy to spot a batsman’s weakness. And it’s certainly no secret that Marsh has got a tendency to drive away from his body early in his innings. For any international bowler worth their salt it’s not rocket science – target him early on with a fourth or fifth stump line and you’re in with a decent shout of having him caught behind.

If it wasn’t for his obvious talent and the relative lack of other Test-quality options, then his international career could well have turned out differently. His ability to score big and very timely match-winning hundreds has certainly given him a greater margin for error with the selectors.

Shaun Marsh, Michael Hussey — Shaun Marsh celebrates a hundred on his Test debut with teammate Mike Hussey. (Photo Credit: Associated Press.)

But despite the large barren spells of drought, there have been the good times too. The times of feast (or in batting terms, “The Daddy Hundreds”). Its certain his career at the highest level wouldn’t have survived without them. And they have been vast and vital. All six of his Test hundreds have gone past the 125-run mark, while five of them have contributed to Australian victories.

Batting in Ricky Ponting’s recently vacated number three spot, his 141 on debut in Pallekele was a statement making knock coming just months after Ponting had handed over the captaincy in the aftermath of a home Ashes defeat. He later returned to Sri Lanka in 2016 to make a face-saving 130 alongside Steve Smith in Colombo in a series Australia would eventually lose 3-0.

After being sidelined for much of 2012 and 2013 due to his diminishing returns, he returned with a bang in early 2014 scoring a masterful 148 against South Africa in Centurion. He repelled an attack that featured Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Morne Morkel for 428 minutes to put Australia one-nil up in a series they would later win 2-1.

But in typical Marsh fashion he recorded a pair in his next match in Port Elizabeth and was dropped for the final match of the series having lasted just three balls in two innings.

The hundreds were sporadic thereafter – as they often were. Although a huge 182 was compiled against a weak West Indian attack at Hobart in late 2015 when Marsh put on 449 for the fourth wicket with Adam Voges.

He was immediately dropped for the fit-again Usman Khawaja for the next Test as other more reliable options were sort. Thereafter he returned only for one-off Tests against Sri Lanka and South Africa in 2016 before cementing his place again in India with fighting knocks of 66 in Bengaluru and a final day match-saving 197-ball 53 in Ranchi.

His solid tour of India was followed up by an excellent home Ashes campaign where he finally showed some much-needed consistency by following up a significant 126 not out in Adelaide with 156 in Sydney to finish the series behind only Smith in the batting charts with 445 runs at 74.16.

It seemed like a career-defining moment for Marsh who finally appeared to take ownership of the number five position. However, his form has since nosedived with series in South Africa and the UAE producing just 161 runs across 12 innings at 13.41. In the two Tests against Pakistan in October he averaged only 3.50 with a top score of seven.

Having failed to reach fifty since his hundred at the SCG his Test future appeared on the periphery. But strong support from Langer and an upturn in ODI and Sheffield Shield form has given him a life raft ahead of a huge home series with India.

Match-winning scores of 80 and 98 against Tasmania in late October were followed by 22 and 106 for the Australian ODI side against South Africa and an unbeaten 163 to help Western Australia chase down 313 against South Australia in Adelaide before he rounded out his preparation for the Border-Gavaskar Test series with 81 and 0 against New South Wales at the new Perth Stadium.

With key batsmen and former leaders Smith and David Warner still serving out their one-year ball-tampering suspensions, its left to Marsh and fellow lefthander Khawaja to step up and replace the huge void with leadership and runs.

When Marsh steps out to bat against India at the Adelaide Oval on Thursday morning he will be hoping to replicate the first-innings 126 he made against England there last summer and not the 3 and 0 he scored against India in January 2012.

How much longer the 35-year-old can hold onto his fragile Test career remains to be seen.

Tag: western australia

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