Matthew Renshaw speaks on Aussie return, road back to Test team

Matthew Renshaw is back in the Australian squad, but it was tough going finding his way there. He opens up on some darker times and his inspiration drawn from Usman Khawaja.

Matthew Renshaw’s return to the Australian team is a credit to his resilience and some deft mentorship from Usman Khawaja.

The Queensland batsman stepped away from cricket entirely in 2019, needing a mental break following his axing from the Test team, but has returned a more mature person.

His state captain Khawaja struggled to cop Renshaw when he first burst onto the scene aged 20, but they’re now inseparable.

Renshaw describes Khawaja as his “life coach”, and that bond will now help the new father in his second coming as a Test cricketer, aged 26.

Matthew Renshaw with good mate Usman Khawaja, playing for Queensland. Picture: Evan Morgan

“At the start Uzzie didn’t like me at all, so we have definitely come a long way,” Renshaw told the Brisbane Heat website.

“I was young and came in and I just wanted to be Ussie’s friend and I probably tried too hard.

“But once I got to know him a bit better, we really clicked.

“I joke around that he is my life coach, he says he has never accepted that role but it’s just a role you get given.

“He’s really switched on and has had so many ups and downs to learn from.

“Seeing him come back into the Australian team and scoring hundreds was quite inspirational.”

Renshaw appears long odds to return to the Australian XI in Sydney, but his recall to the squad is a sure sign he could play a key role as a top or middle-order batsman on the upcoming tour of India where his skills against spin bowling have had him earmarked for the past nine months.

The left hander’s is an underrated comeback story.

Renshaw celebrates scoring a century in November 2022in the PM’s XI game. Picture: Getty Images

Despite a relatively successful first 10 Tests as an opener during an unstable time for the Australian team, the game got on top of Renshaw after a county season away in his country of birth, England, and he took a break from the game.

By his own admission, he was too immature for Test cricket.

“My Test debut was six years ago and I can barely remember it, it all happened so quickly and I don’t think I took it all in,” Renshaw said.

“Only being 20 and only having played a few games of Shield cricket, I didn’t really understand how important playing Test cricket was.

“I came in and was blue eyed and bushy tailed and I didn’t really know what was going on.

“In more recent times, I took a break from cricket just before Covid hit.

“I had to rethink why I was playing cricket, at that time it was all about trying to play for Australia, but I wasn’t enjoying my cricket.

“I wasn’t the best person that I have ever been at those times, just getting frustrated with little things.

“It was important for me to step back, rejigging my technique and my thoughts.”

BOLAND STALKED BY ‘WILD THING’ IN FIGHT FOR SCG SELECTION

After fending off Josh Hazlewood last week, Scott Boland is now being stalked by the ‘The Wild Thing’ in a new fight for survival in Sydney.

A fully fit Hazlewood is expected to return to the Australian bowling attack for the final Test against South Africa on Wednesday, with Lance ‘The Wild Thing’ Morris the new threat to Boland’s place in the team, as the fast bowling beast hunts a debut at the SCG.

In the other selection battle, second spinner Ashton Agar appears the frontrunner to edge out fellow comeback kid Matt Renshaw and replace Cameron Green in the XI as part of a potential batting order reshuffle which would push wicketkeeper Alex Carey up to No.6.

But all eyes will be on the showdown between the ultra-reliable Boland and raw-boned tearaway, Morris, who with his ability to rattle cages at 150km/h would be the most like-for-like replacement for the injured Mitchell Starc.

Lance Morris (R) was a substitute fielder in the Boxing Day Test, but could play a much larger role in Sydney. Picture: Getty Images

Morris has promised to live up to his nickname if selected.

“That’s probably a part of my game that has got me this far – being a little bit different,” Morris told cricket.com.

“I don’t want to be that channel bowler that just bowls outside off all day and waits for the batter to make a mistake.

“I want to get up them a bit and intimidate and blast them out.”

It would be harsh to drop Boland with his career bowling average of 12.21, but the Victorian no longer has the protection of his home ground the MCG as an extra factor in his favour.

Scott Boland would be unlucky to be dropped. Picture: AFP

Morris was called into the Australian squad earlier this summer as a shadow for Starc, and coach Andrew McDonald strongly hinted following Starc’s finger injury during the Boxing Day Test that Morris was now a massive chance to debut at the SCG, even considering Hazlewood’s anticipated return from a side strain.

“We always look to complement the attack … we see Lance Morris added to the squad, there’s clearly a role there for him if Mitchell Starc was to go down,” McDonald told SEN.

“So he may be looking like he’ll get an opportunity in Sydney based on the balance of that attack.”

Morris revealed his ‘Wild Thing’ nickname came when he was a young club cricketer in Perth and a teammate played a prank where he tampered with a whiteboard notice of the players’ upcoming medical appointments.

“I put my name down. He (teammate) walked in there, scrubbed it off, wrote ‘Wild Thing’,” Morris said on the Unplayable Podcast.

“I walked in the next day to see the doctor and he’s like, ‘Wild Thing? You wrote that?’ And I was like, ‘No, I promise I did not write that. I don’t call myself the Wild Thing’.

“So from that point, it pretty much stuck.

“I kick up a bit of a stink about it, but the more you resist the more it sticks.”

Selectors have two options for replacing Green, the man described by captain Pat Cummins as “irreplaceable.”

The first is to draw on Agar’s pedigree making 98 on Test debut at Trent Bridge on the 2013 Ashes, and back the spinner to bat at No. 7 and round out a five-man specialist bowling attack in preparation for his likely selection on February’s Test tour of India.

The second option is to prioritise the batting and play Renshaw at No. 6 and only go with four bowlers – either Nathan Lyon, Agar and two quicks, or three pacers and the one spinner in Lyon.

Given Green is out, Hazlewood is returning from a side strain, Morris is potentially making a Test debut and Agar could be playing his first Test ever on home soil – the safest choice would be to go with the security of five bowlers.

If Renshaw was selected in the XI it may also raise questions about pecking order given Marcus Harris has been with the squad all summer as the back-up batsman.