India v Australia, second Test: Selection pressure builds with no word on Cameron Green fitness

While Australia remains desperate for David Warner to regain his touch, the visitors have more pressing issues with Cameron Green’s fitness essential to the balance of the second Test side.

As Australia banks on David Warner bouncing back the way he did with a double ton at the MCG, the final line-up for second Test remains a confusing work in progress on match eve.

The fitness of Cameron Green and Mitchell Starc was still being monitored. And, three spinners was an option, which would mean Starc wouldn’t play.

Another failure at Delhi will increase the pressure on selectors to drop Warner, although replacing him would pose more problems.

Cummins says the opener’s double hundred in the Boxing Day match is a guide to how dangerous he remains, despite a poor run in recent years and a poor record in India.

“I’m not a selector,” the captain said. “I don’t think they’ve had a (selection) meeting, but I’m sure Davey will be there. You saw this year at the Boxing Day Test: when he puts pressure back on the opposition he’s pretty hard to bowl to.

“You don’t get as many good balls, so he knows that.

“I’m sure that’d be part of his plan. He has been batting really well here.

“Even in the lead up I thought he was fantastic. I know there’s a lot of talk about spin bowling through the middle but with that new ball it’s sometimes the hardest time to bat as well.”

Cummins conceded Green was essential to the balance of the side, but hinted at doubts about his recover from a broken finger.

“Having a right hander helps and him providing our fifth bowling option also helps, he’s a big player, it certainly helps the team function well from batting and bowling,” he said.

“You have got to be able to perform as well, he’s still coming back from that injury, he’s only had a couple of sessions where he’s catching with a hard ball. He had a really good session yesterday. We will see how he pulls up.”

Cameron Green bowls during a training session but a cloud still remains over his fitness heading into the second Test in Delhi. Picture: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

Cummins also indicated that the team was opening to bringing in either Matthew Kuhnemann or Ashton Agar at the expense of Mitchell Starc — but that would depend on Green’s fitness.

With the exception of Steve Smith, Australia’s batsman looked like they entered the first innings in Nagpur with little knowledge of how to handle the conditions or the first spinners — and the second with even less idea how to go about it.

Plan B proved worse than Plan A.

Coach Andrew McDonald said later that the side had let scoreboard pressure get to his players in the second innings and they needed to return to the original plan of taking the game on.

In the disastrous 2016 tour of Sri Lanka Warner highlighted a shift in philosophy that occurred during the three Test series, saying on arrival that you had to be “patient” and wait for the boundary balls before the approach changed to “You’ve got to think out of the box. If you defend, one’s got your name on it … you’re a sitting duck when you’re facing six balls in a row”.

Warner scored just two runs from 38 balls in the second innings at Nagpur, then struck two boundaries before being trapped LBW by Ravi Ashwin.

Cummins was asked about the discussions in the batting group since the innings loss.

“They’ve been really good, the batters have been fantastic, it’s not too different to leading in,” he said.

David Warner has the full support of his captain despite the opener’s failure in the first Test.

“I think the planning has been really good and now it’s about going out there and doing it and at times that might that might be brave enough to take a calculated risk when the risk might be a little bit higher than in Australia, they’ve been really good, they’re all really strong in their plans, trained really well, so we will see how we go.

“When you’re ahead of the game over here, it’s really hard for the opposition to get themselves back in and that’s going to be the challenge if we are behind at times, is how can we put pressure back into their dressing room? Once you put pressure back on the bowlers, suddenly the you don’t get as many good balls and the scoreboard keeps ticking over, fields change. So that’s certainly been part of the discussions.

“You’re gonna fail over here — it’s about failing the right way. These conditions are tough. If that’s our best chance, by taking the game on, someone taking a calculated risk, if it doesn’t come off, that’s totally fine. No stress.”

(Failing the right way, it turns out, is a concept taught in business schools. Cummins spent his lengthy injury break completing a Bachelor of Business at Sydney’s UTS in the institution’s Elite Athletes Program.)

Captain Pat Cummins and his teammate David Warner deep in conversation as the Aussies hope to turn around their poor start to the tour.

Crash: Hayden showed Australia how to get Head in the game

Matthew Hayden once cooked up a five-year plan to conquer India, a slow-fused mission the likes of which may not see again in an increasingly frantic cricket world.

Shame about that.

The contrast between Hayden’s transformation from a modest player of spin into a hurricane force who averaged 109 on the 2001 Indian tour and Travis Head’s Nagpur roadblock say much about the changing face of cricket.

We’ve all been saying for months that this Indian series will define a generation but there has been no huge concessions made to target it.

No specific Australian plan to enhance Head’s skill against spin.

Instead more of a resignation among the hierarchy that he is a round peg in a square hole.

The contrast between the careers of Travis Head and Matthew Hayden highlights the changing face of cricket. Picture: Getty Images.

As special as it is, this India tour in some ways feels like just another stop on cricket’s fast moving treadmill, a sign that Test cricket is not as much of priority as it once was.

That was not the case for Hayden back in 2001.

In the years leading up to the tour he learnt not one but three sweep shots, played county cricket in England for two years on wicket deliberately dusted up for team-mate Graeme Swann and begged for and finally gained permission to joining a group of young Australian players sent to India in 1998 specifically to improve their play against spin.

His final act in Mission India was to get Border Field curator Ross Harris to dust up a wicket for him to prepare for India, not a week ahead of time as was the was case in Sydney last month, but months before the tour.

Head, by contrast, was on the outer for this tour from the time he averaged seven last season in Sri Lanka and there have been whispers that as long ago as November there were chats among the team hierarchy he would not play the first Test at Nagpur.

Head’s short-comings against spin are well known but unlike Hayden, initially led footed to the slow men early in his career, there was no big behind the scenes play to sharpen his skills for this tour.

Hayden cooked up a five-year plan to conquer India, but Australia have no plan to help Head work on his weaknesses.

Back in Hayden’s day, Test cricket was the absolute priority. There was no Big Bash or T20 scene in 2001.

That meant Hayden, who had purchased a holiday home on Stradbroke Island not long before the 2001 tour, simply had to prove himself in Test cricket if he was going anywhere as a cricketer.

That 2001 tour, which featured his third stint as a Test batsman, changed the course of his career and set him up for life.

Now it’s different. Players have multiple ways to earn a crust.

Australia shamelessly targeted the Big Bash for its senior players in the weeks before the tour which took them a world away from the challenges of India.

It made sense for the Sydney wicket for the last Test of the summer to be a huge spinner’s deck but, as always, it never quite got there.

INJURY WORRIES PUT AUSSIE OVERHAUL IN DOUBT

Peter Lalor in Delhi

Australia’s chances in the second Test suffered a number of set backs on arrival at Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla stadium on Wednesday.

Mitchell Starc is not totally confident he will play, Cameron Green is still doing some training drills with a tennis ball and the curators are up to the same old tricks.

Early inspection of the wicket reveals an area sedated in the middle where the seamers pitch, but a crack house being constructed on a length for the spinners.

The Australians expected nothing less from the hostile curators who erupt if anyone tries to take a close picture of their strip, but Starc and selectors would have their hopes up he would be available.

Mitch Starc checks out his injury after being hurt during the Boxing Day Test.

The left-armer, who damaged a ligament in the MCG Test, flew in a few days ago after having the splint removed and it has not responded as he expected.

“There’s still a fair bit of restriction there, it’s progressing each day, I probably had different expectations coming out of the splint than what is the reality but pushing it today, we’ll see how it goes when I wake up tomorrow,” Starc said.

“It is still progressing, it’s still on track we will see how it goes today.

“There are some boxes still to tick, I’ll give it a real good test today and see how it comes back in spells, I haven’t tested it yet. Still been bowling a lot back home since the injury, it’s just more how that reacts, how the ball is coming out, just tick a few boxes along the way before it’s green light.”

With the team down 1-0 and the series all but on the line selectors will be compelled to take a few risks with both Starc and the all-rounder Green.

The latter is being kept in cotton wool as long as possible to rule out any further damage to a broken finger.

Starc bowled very well with the injury in the latter part of the Melbourne Test.

Cameron Green at training in Nagpur.

The pair bowled on the centre wicket with Pat Cummins and Scott Boland — who will probably lose his place if Starc is fit.

Renshaw is expected to make way for Green should he make the XI.

“I’m still a good chance,” he said.

“It’ll come down to how it reacts by the end of the day, how the medical staff see it, how the selectors and Pat and Ronnie feel about it as well. I’ll do everything I can to be fully available for selection. then it’s a discussion for the rest of the group involved.”

He has not tested it much with bat in hand and admitted “it’s going to be uncomfortable but I don’t think it’s an issue”.

And on fielding, he said: “I think I’ll still field with a cap on, that’s what I did in Melbourne anyway … I don’t field myself in slip anyway.

“I’ve been here for a few days now, I had a solo session on Monday then Kuhnemann was here yesterday so he had a bowl and I had a bat and a team session today so it is all on track.”

Starc admitted it was “unusual” to be parachuted in rather than getting time to acclimatise.

“There was plenty of reasoning behind it, still having the facilities back home and I had an extra four sessions with NSW, “ he said.

“I could have been here in the conditions, but I still had the splint on my finger, I only got that off two days before I got the plane over here, there was plenty of plans in the back ground around it.

Blood stains are seen on the uniform of Mitchell Starc after his injury.

“I had another scan two days before I flew out, that was one part of it, there were a few things going on but that was part of it to have the scan before I flew out.

“I had to give it the six weeks, the six weeks was after the guys had flown out. It was partly a timing thing, partly a scan, I was never in line for the first Test.

“I started bowling without the splint on Thursday and Friday and then had Monday and today will be the fourth.”

Starc said the next few days will be critical.

“There’s still a fair bit of restriction there, it’s progressing each day, I probably had different expectations coming out of the splint than what is the reality but pushing it today, we’ll see how it goes when I wake up tomorrow.

“It is still progressing, it’s still on track we will see how it goes today.

“There are some boxes still to tick, I’ll give it a real good test today and see how it comes back in spells, I haven’t tested it yet. Still been bowling a lot back home since the injury, it’s just more how that reacts, how the ball is coming out, just tick a few boxes along the way before it’s green light.”