Crash: How Cricket Australia’s contract snub may have lit a fire under Travis Head
Earlier this year Australia’s selectors ensured Travis Head would have to ‘sing for his supper’. It may prove the making of him as a Test cricketer.
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Earlier this year Australia’s cricket selectors hatched a plan to flush out something special from Travis Head by hitting him where it hurts most … the hip pocket.
Australia had the power to name 20 contracted players on their latest list but chose just 17 because they wanted the last three to earn their keep and earn their promotion on the run if they did well this season.
Had they handed out 20 contracts Head would have got a deal and perhaps just floated along on the featureless fringe – sometimes in, sometimes out - where he has spent the last few years.
But he missed the cut because they wanted Head and others to sing for their supper.
It hurt him. Only Head would know how much the snub played in rousing him to his career rescuing century in a session against England.
But Australia senses it may have lit a fire under him.
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Head was on a camping trip in the Flinders Ranges about 450km north of Adelaide when the contract list was announced.
The selectors franticly tried to contact him and delayed the announcement of the news for a day in an attempt to track him down and when the call did get through he had to wave his phone in the air to get coverage.
Mild mannered Head is as diplomatic as they come but he couldn’t hide the truth. It jolted him.
“I was extremely disappointed at first but understanding of the points they made and where they’re at in terms of making decisions,’’ Head told Cricket.com.au at the time.
“They want guys who play good international cricket and who demand contracts through their international performance.”
And so came the form revival which took a while because he went to Sussex in England and struggled before returning to Australia to find decent runs.
It will be interesting to see whether Australia’s selectors mark Head’s form spike down as a winner for a smaller contract list.
They had been concerned for years that players on mid to low level contracts were being rewarded for potential rather than performance and, as a consequence, were cruising.
Head follows a talent list of South Australian left-handed batsmen like David Hookes, Darren Lehmann and Wayne Phillips blessed with enormous ability who could easily have played many more Tests.
Like the other three Head is a naturally aggressive player whose career is likely to be determined not so much by the ripping shots he uncorks in fourth gear but the more subtle gears below when dangerous swing bowlers are feeding him baited hooks outside off-stump.
Test cricket is as much about surviving as thriving.
But no matter what happens now he has a career defining innings for which he will always be known for.
A century in a session in the first Test of an Ashes series at the Gabba. It does not get any better.
It may be the finest moment of his career. But the key to ever deeper satisfaction will be following it up with consistent results.
WARNER HAS COMPELLING CASE AS OUR MOST UNDERRATED
In many ways it was appropriate that two days after a diminutive Australian left-handed batsman was honoured with a Gabba statue, two others from the same cloth gift-wrapped the first Test.
Fellow lefties David Warner and Travis Head did Allan Border proud in vastly different ways as the one-two punch that has left England sore and sorry and looking very much like so many other English sides ground to dust in Australia by hot days, green wickets and harsh crowds.
Warner’s chancy but crucial 94 revived one of Border’s greatest virtues and a lost art in Test cricket — dirty day runs.
Runs scored, not when your juices flowing like a mountain stream, but conditions are challenging and your bat feels the width of a straw and just as brittle. But you just keep going.
Warner had three escapes when he should have been out including being bowled off a no-ball by Ben Stokes. He was struck on the body several times and was rocked but never rattled.
Hurried by Mark Wood’s pace and Ollie Robinson’s precision, he played and missed so many times the ball must have seemed as elusive as a soap sud but somehow stayed afloat to leave Australia with the axe in their hands.
Currently…
— Joshua Kay (@js_kay) December 9, 2021
GS Chappell
87 Tests
24x 100
31x 50
DA Warner
87 Tests
24x 100
31x 50#Ashes
Some revealing statistics were posted on Twitter that Warner had played the same number of Tests (87), hundreds (24) and fifties (31) as the great Greg Chappell.
This is truly exceptional progress and stamps Warner as arguably Australia’s most underrated batsmen ever.
Head played the innings of his life. For the last few years he has teased and tormented Australia with his cheeky stroke play without ever convincing them he was heavy duty enough to go the long journey as a Test player.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, came a Tour de Force that shaped, the innings, the Test, and quite probably the series because the longer he batted the more Ollie Robinson was ground down and started to clutch his hamstring.
It also kept a proppy Ben Stokes in the field.
There were fireworks everywhere in the final session and the only blow more severe than the ones Head was throwing came in the member’s area where a fight broke out and a punch from nowhere sent one patron tumbling down the stairs.
The crowd reaction was so loud play even halted for a few seconds as players watched on.
England might well lose this Test by an innings yet beneath the tub-thumping results lies the suspicion that the tourists are not THAT bad and Australia are not THAT good and the gap between them is not THAT wide.
How different it could have been had they bowled first under grey skies and played Stuart Broad. But from the first ball of the match when Rory Burns was bowled by Mitchell Starc, almost everything that could have gone wrong for England has.
Simple catches have been dropped, a wicket was taken off a no-ball, team selection was poor, running between wickets lacked urgency, batting plans including an unwillingness to move forward left them sitting ducks.
And yet their best work highlighted what could have been.
Ollie Robinson bowled superbly and though his Test career is in its infancy his Test bowling average of 18 says everything about the persistent threat he poses to batsmen with his grind length and occasional bounce.
Wood pushed the speedometer to 153kph – a rare feat – and he will be a threat for as long as he stays fit.
England will be concerned by the form of left-armed spinner Jack Leach who was targeted and taken down in a brutal piece of premeditated power play.
Only the two pitch invaders who were ruthlessly crash tackled by police copped rougher treatment.
While England were suffering in the field veteran champions Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson were bowling with pink balls in the nets getting ready for the second Test in Adelaide.
It seemed strange. It was strange. The key to beating Australia in Australia is getting an early lead.
India ran Australia down from behind last summer but it barely ever happens.
Teams who go down early almost always go out the back door.
Yet the strange thing is it could easily have been a different story.
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