Australia vs South Africa Test cricket: Scott Boland wins selection battle of Brisbane
Australia’s team for the Gabba Test against South Africa has been revealed and it is a man outside the starting XI who will have one of the most important jobs.
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Scott Boland has been locked in to take on South Africa at the Gabba, but ‘The Wild Thing’ Lance Morris will play his own Test match in the nets.
Australian coach Andrew McDonald has confirmed Boland will beat Queensland local Michael Neser to the vacant third spot in the attack, with captain Pat Cummins expected to return to spearhead the side in the first rematch since the 2018 Sandpapergate scandal.
Anyone who thought lighting wouldn’t strike twice for Boland after his Boxing Day magic last summer, has been proven wrong. The Victorian is proving a consistent Test match force.
“(Boland’s) record is amazing at the moment, so he‘ll take his place and the assumption is that Pat does play,” said McDonald.
“So you‘ve got Cummins, (Mitchell) Starc and Boland.
“What’s (Boland) averaging in the second innings – four, or something ridiculous like that?
“So there’s an expectation now, because it’s not just an outlier. It’s happening every time.
“It‘s fantastic to see the crowd embrace him. It’s not too often you get a Victorian embraced at the Adelaide Oval.”
Cummins will have to get through Thursday’s main training before being given the final green tick, and it’s at that session that ‘The Wild Thing’ will be let off the leash to replicate to Australian batters the heat they can expect to face from South Africa’s 150km/h fast bowling squadron in Saturday’s first Test.
Morris is not in the squad as a training tool and remains a genuine chance to debut against South Africa later this summer, but having the express quick in the squad could be crucial in helping Australia make the step up from easybeat Windies to real-deal arch rivals South Africa.
In Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje, Marco Jansen and Gerald Coetzee, the Proteas have four men in their arsenal capable of breaking 150km/h on the speed gun as well as Lungi Ngidi who is a rapid 140km/h weapon.
“We’ve got a couple of good fast bowlers they can prepare against as well, so we’ve got a bit of ball speed ourselves,” said McDonald.
“We saw Mark Wood out here last year challenging our batters and we were able to navigate through that.
“We know the challenges ahead of us, we’re prepared for those challenges.
“We see Lance being able to play Test cricket for Australia. We’ll be challenged with some different surfaces and we feel as though he can complement what we’ve already got here.
“Lance gives us a point of difference … so that’s just purely a coincidence that he bowls that quick and the South Africans do as well.”
Perhaps the biggest headache Australia has ahead of the South African series, is the lack of match time star all-rounder Cameron Green has had this summer.
Green’s addition into the Twenty20 World Cup squad robbed him of playing any Sheffield Shield matches this summer, and after failing to get a hit in the Perth Test, he was out cheaply in both innings of the second Test against the West Indies, a victim in some respects of Australia being so on top in the game.
Test great Ricky Ponting expressed concern that getting out slogging as Australia tried to up the ante in Adelaide could impact on Green’s confidence.
“It’s a little challenge. I haven’t seen that too often, a player not bat in a Test match at number six, so that’s a unique scenario to deal with,” said McDonald.
“The one thing about Cameron is he’s learning on the go.
“He hasn’t had the Shield run that potentially he’s had in other years coming into the Test series, but we’ve seen he’s a fast learner … you keep getting thrown up different problems to solve and he’s a great problem solver.”
Selection snub already backfiring on Proteas
South Africa’s tour of Australia has been rocked by a stunning selection decision which has prompted a snubbed batsman to speak out against team selectors.
Promising left-handed batsman Ryan Rickelton was omitted from the touring party to Australia on the assumption his ankle injury, which will require surgery at the season’s end, would not stand up to the rigours of an Australian tour.
Rickelton was motivated to the eyeballs by the snub and went out and heaped egg on to the faces of the selectors with a form surge which includes scores of 100 not out, 108 not out, 126 and 99 in successive games for the Lions in South African domestic cricket.
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around what’s going on, to be honest,” Rickelton told a South African cricket magazine.
“Just a couple of weeks ago I got a call from Vic (Proteas selection convener Victor Mpitsang) saying, ‘You’re down on the team sheet to go to Australia, but effectively there’s a cross next to your name. What’s going on?’.
“I said, ‘Vic, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m fine and fit to play’. Long story short, he said he needed to get hold of the doctor to find out what’s going on. My ankle, at the moment, has probably been hurt for about three years, the surgeon reckons.’’
Rickelton and his doctor came up with a plan to have cortisone injections in the ankle to get through the tour and was confident he could do so.
South Africa has already taken a gamble on one injured player, with batsman Temba Bavuma carrying a sore elbow.
Batting is South Africa’s short suit so the decision to omit Rickelton could have major ramifications.
South African coach Charl Langeveldt said on Monday there were no moves afoot to make Rickelton a late inclusion in the squad, which looked sharp and brimming with fast bowling options after a four-day trial game against an Australia A team.
“(We’ve) got to stick to out 16, he’s been unlucky to injury,’’ Langeveldt said.
“It’s unfortunate for him. He has been scoring runs at home but guys here have been scoring runs domestically.’’
SA’s desperate plan to challenge Marnus
– Ben Horne
South Africa senses there will be “extra spice’’ when they confront former countryman Marnus Labuschagne and it may come with an original flavour at the Gabba this week.
With all other game plans from rival nations being shredded before their eyes will South Africa try and engage Labuschagne in on-field banter in his one-time first language Afrikaans?
This is one of the intriguing questions around the captivating match-up between the world’s most in-form batsmen and the nation of his birth for the first time in a Test series when Australia play South Africa at the Gabba on Saturday.
South African captain Dean Elgar was asked during his first week in Australia whether his team had a game plan for Labuschagne and admitted his heritage added a rich flavour to the contest.
“He is one of the form batters in the world and I am sure there is going to be a little bit of extra spice knowing he is ex-South African as well,’’ Elgar said.
When asked whether he would chip away in Afrikaans to Labuschagne, Elgar responded “possibly … my last encounter with him was in an (English) county game and he spoke Afrikaans to me and I was like, OK. Who knows? We will see.’’
It’s a duel both parties have been looking forward to for several years as the Proteas try to crack the Marnus code which no nation has been able to fully decipher.
Labuschagne, averaging 60.8 after 30 Tests, moved to Queensland from South Africa at age 10 and until that stage his heroes had always been South African.
“The likes of Jacques Kallis … I’ve had it quite clear he was one of my favourite players growing up and I had many posters on the wall growing up there and following the cricket in South Africa,’’ Labuschagne told News Corp this season.
“As you are growing up you have your players you love watching and Shaun Pollock and Jacques Kallis were probably the two really big ones that I grew up loving.’’
“It’s always a little bit more special when you’re playing a series against the country you were born in and you’ve got a soft spot for South Africa. It’s always nice to be able to play against them and obviously do well.‘’
Labuschagne, who hails from Klerksdorp, birth place of iconic anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu, barely spoke English when he landed in Australia.
Early in life he spoke almost exclusively the Dutch originating Afrikaans and his knowledge of English was so limited he recalled being confused in his first day at school in Australia when his teacher said “take out your rubbers and rulers.’’
The right-hander has been in rare form this season after working on several technical aspects of his game in a winter when he also had a rare but brief break from the game.
Labuschagne packed up his bats and sent them back to Kookaburra to have fresh stickers put on them and went off to Stradbroke Island to catch his break for the marathon stint ahead.
Though both teams accept they must never revisit the grubby standards of the Sandpapergate series in 2018, South Africa are well aware their three successive series wins in Australia were built on the back of a hard-nosed approach where they stood up to the Australians in the lions den.
“I think you have to (do that),’’ said batsman Theunis de Bruin said. “Over the last few years India and South Africa have done that. Virat Kohli brought that in … playing in oppositions faces. It’s not always verbal. Sometimes its body language and looking someone in the eye.’’
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