As members of the unofficial Australian men’s cricket team selection panel, can we agree that in accumulating 1,379 Test runs at an average of 38.3 — including four centuries — Joe Burns has displayed a fair degree of class?
Can we also take for granted that in making just 62 first-class runs this season at an average of 6.88 — including scores of 4, 0, 0 and 1 for Australia A against India — Burns’s form is on the lamentable side of miserable?
So as the real Australian selectors ponder the Queenslander’s fate ahead of the first Test against India, we could well see an old adage tested in real time: is form really temporary and class permanent?
Such is the depth of Burns’s slump surely only faith in this proposition will prompt the Australian selectors to overlook alternatives, such as promoting Matthew Wade or Marnus Labuschagne to partner Marcus Harris against India in Adelaide.
Picking Burns would involve the counterintuitive belief that he can perform at the highest level against a talented opponent with a swinging pink ball when he has failed repeatedly in far more favourable circumstances.
As it is, the anecdotal evidence suggests form can be more than a match for even the classiest protagonist.
The most infamous form slump in modern cricket history involved one of the least likely candidates — Greg Chappell’s run of seven ducks (four consecutive) during the 1981/82 season.
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Such was Chappell’s elegant stroke play and insouciance at the crease that the sight of the Australian skipper scratching around with the cluelessness of an overwhelmed clubby was not merely unusual, it was emotionally wrenching.
The nadir of Chappell’s torment was not one of his ducks but an innings of 59 eked out during a World Series Cup match against West Indies at a packed MCG on a baking hot day in which Australia was bowled out for 146.
Imagine Monet painstakingly attempting to draw stick figures or Pavarotti warbling the discordant lyrics of an advertising jingle and you will have some idea of the depth of Chappell’s temporary decline, the agony prolonged on that day by his failure to fail.
Chappell’s famous mid-slump remark has become the trademark response for batters trying to reassure themselves the next big score is just an innings away: “I can’t say I’m batting badly. I’m not batting long enough to be batting badly.”
It has never been quite clear if Chappell was in denial or truly believed that some solid sessions in the nets were cruelly contradicted by his succession of well-rounded scorebook entries.
There is also the further philosophical question that Chappell’s remark raises, one that the Australian selectors will agonise over this week — can form be defined by the odd good shot or promising net sessions or is it purely a matter of runs on the board?
Burns overshadowed by Pucovski’s rise
There are those observers who can tell you there are “good runs” and “bad runs”.
Yet Burns has scored so few that any estimation of the relative value of his minuscule contributions is guesswork at best.
But you cannot help wonder if the speculation that mounted as Victorian wunderkind Will Pucovski scored consecutive Sheffield Shield double centuries has undermined Burns’s confidence or at least created some self-doubt.
Put yourself in a situation where you have earned a coveted job in which you are performing to the expectations of your employer, yet you are constantly bombarded by office gossip about a younger, more talented fellow worker who is set to take your place.
Warner was ridiculed for intervening in selection by publicly supporting Burns as the public excitement about Pucovski’s potential Test debut grew.
But like coach Justin Langer, perhaps Warner understood the awkward position the incumbent Burns was in as the potential victim of both Pucovski’s tremendous early-season form and the public’s insatiable appetite for youth.
What we do know is that opening batsmen are a rare breed with even the apparently flint-hearted Geoff Boycott prototypes providing a psychological case study in self-immersion due to the thanklessness of their task.
At club level, an opening bat who fails on day one might spend the rest of the afternoon at the scorer’s table or square leg, and the following two weekends in the field should his team bowl first in their next game.
This not only explains why opening batsmen pretend they can bowl off-spin to stay in the game but also the quiet desperation that can enter and debilitate their mindset.
In the modern era, there has been — to borrow some marketing jargon — a “reimagining” of the opening batsman’s role as Warner, Virender Sehwag and other blunt weapons thrived in a role once typically characterised by a wet sponge.
But against the pink ball in Adelaide this week, whoever fills the opening roles for Australia will be under intense pressure to perform the most basic of tasks — dig in, take the shine off, get through to lunch (or, in this case, dinner) and set the game up for Steve Smith and the middle-order fancy boys.
Such is Burns’s summer torment it would take an almost astonishing show of faith by the Australian selectors to have him in at the top of the order.
But if Burns’s faith was shaken by his likely usurping by Pucovski, perhaps now an unlikely selection will stir the opener from his current slump — if, indeed, his class is permanent.
