Once, tour matches were a chance for local teams with a strong identity to try their skill against credentialled visitors. These days they’re better described as warm-up matches, in which a confected team offers Test preparation.
Where they were assessed as contests in their own right, they’re now better assessed in terms of what teams want to get out of them.
After an Australia A side shook hands on a draw with the touring Indians at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Sunday night, it was clear the home camp had got none of what it wanted from the preparation for the upcoming day-night Test in Adelaide.
Both likely Test openers were in the A side to make runs; few runs were forthcoming. A possible Test all-rounder was substituted out with concussion. Both opening fast bowlers got injured. The spinner next in line for Test duties got two overs in one innings and 1 for 148 in the next.
The Indian camp, in contrast, got everything it wanted. Prithvi Shaw made a quick 40 in the first dig and Mayank Agarwal ground out 61 in the second, sending both openers into the first Test with runs.
The four Indian fast bowlers got two chances to bowl under lights: on night one using lateral movement at a carousel of new batsmen to rissole Australia A for 108, and on night three against a set pair that allowed the quicks to fine-tune a bouncer barrage.
New-ball pairing Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami were especially good across both innings, cranking up the intensity as required, while neither Navdeep Saini nor Mohammed Siraj did his chances of a Test spot any harm.
The second evening, meanwhile, offered a good batting session against the pink ball for Ajinkya Rahane and Hanuma Vihari, who will make up India’s middle order in Adelaide.
Shubman Gill had earlier stroked a composed 65 to put him in good stead if he has to step in for his captain at number four in the second Test after Virat Kohli leaves the tour.
As a reserve team, Australia A dodged a bullet: a brief career of 23 first-class matches has seen Gill loot the ‘A’ teams of West Indies for 204, South Africa for 90 and 92, and New Zealand for 62, 136, and 204 not out.
Battling Burns misses wide-open goal with other options injured
India will go into the first Test with options. Australia will go in trying to solve problems on the run. That all starts at the top of the order with Joe Burns and Marcus Harris.
The fizzle for Burns has been much discussed: a sequence for Queensland this season of 7, 29, 0, 10 and 11, worsening through the India tour matches to 4, 0, 0 and 1.
He was backed by selectors a month ago as the incumbent, but even that case wasn’t strong: Australia’s last Test season finished nearly a year ago, and in it, Burns made 256 runs at 32 while his teammates racked up century after century.
After his latest dismissal on Sunday afternoon, LBW to Shami moving across his stumps trying to protect his outside edge, he spent time in the stands in conversation with selector Trevor Hohns and later walked laps of the boundary talking to assistant coach Chris Rogers.
They’re the ones who have to determine whether Burns is only having a bad run of results that he has the ability to break, or whether some bigger problem with technique or state of mind is inhibiting his chances of success.
If Burns has made himself unpickable, the timing is terrible. David Warner and Will Pucovski are injured, with only Harris drafted into the squad as cover.
A few weeks ago, public suggestions that the 37-year-old Shaun Marsh might mount a comeback were made in jest, but it increasingly looks like an idea with some merit.
Marsh can open the batting, has experience against India, and had the most prodigious first-class streak of his career recently with three Shield tons in four games. He played two day-night Tests at Adelaide in his career and produced match-winning hands in both of them.
Australia only needs a stop-gap before Warner or Pucovski can return, meaning that one of Harris or Burns would be back out of the side anyway. That wouldn’t worry a player like Marsh, recruited on a limited brief. Call it The Expendables: a retired veteran called up for one last job.
The far more likely scenario is that omission for Burns will let Australia try out the Cameron Green experiment, getting the all-rounder in at number six in the order and shuffling one of the locked-in players up to open temporarily.
That way, Warner’s return could see Green make way after having a taste of the big time, and will put less pressure on Green to perform than if he had displaced an established player. Pucovski’s inclusion would depend on how Harris has gone.
All this speculation will be rendered useless soon enough. Australia will make decisions one way or another. What the team lacks, though, is a sense of being settled ahead of a major assignment.
Even the experience of Mitchell Swepson feeds into that — increasingly seen as the next spin option behind Nathan Lyon, successful when drafted into the Twenty20 team against India in the last fortnight, but smashed around when it came to a longer form of the game.
India doesn’t have a finalised Test team either, but what it has is a good series of possibilities for any spot in the XI. The Australians may yet prove too strong in home conditions, but certainly, the Indians are the ones who have emerged from the tour matches looking the most warmed up for action.
