Australia’s chairman of selectors John Inverarity adopts a tough-love policy for fringe players like Callum Ferguson and Mitchell Marsh.
Test opener Ed Cowan could find out very soon if this policy also applies to him.
West Australia allrounder Marsh was removed from calculations for a spot in the Australia A side to play South Africa last week at the SCG following a boozy night out to celebrate his 21st birthday in Cape Town in October during the Perth Scorchers’ unsuccessful Champions League Twenty20 campaign.
South Australia’s Ferguson was also left out of the Australia A side despite a Sheffield Shield century a few days before the team was named. He was told to be more consistent.
Cowan is averaging 29.83 in his seven-Test career and has struggled at Shield level this season, scoring only 150 runs at 21.42 in four matches.
One of the issues for Inverarity’s selection panel to confront is whether Rob Quiney is automatically dropped for the second Test in Adelaide on November 22 if Shane Watson is fit again.
Quiney was on Monday named for the first Test at the Gabba in place of Watson, who succumbed to a calf strain picked up playing for NSW against Queensland in last week’s Shield match.
What happens if Quiney improves on last week’s 85 for Australia A with a century at the Gabba, and Cowan fails?
While Quiney has also averaged in the low 20s (22.66) in Shield cricket this season, would the 30-year-old Victorian really deserve to be axed after one excellent Test if question marks still linger over Cowan?
Inverarity was warm in his praise of Tasmania’s Cowan late last month at a press conference at the MCG to announce the Australia A side.
“He is a very well-performed player and a great team man and we’re backing him,” Inverarity said.
Inverarity even went as far as to compare Cowan to one of cricket’s great scrappers Steve Waugh, who averaged 51.06 in a 168-Test career which began in the mid-1980s in one of Australian cricket’s leanest periods.
Waugh, facing attacks led by the likes of India’s Kapil Dev and New Zealand’s Richard Hadlee, averaged only 18.44 in his first seven Tests.
“Steve Waugh averaged … there’s a lot of players who in their first five or six games haven’t set the world on fire and they’ve come through and flourished,” Inverarity said.
“(Cowan) has played well on two or three occasions (scoring three Test half-centuries) and we’re backing him to do well this time.”
Asked by AAP if this meant Cowan would be given selectors’ backing for the upcoming six Tests against South Africa and Sri Lanka, Inverarity continued: “You can’t predict the whole summer.
“We’re backing him to do well and we hope all the others on the fringe do well too,” he said.