Konstas dazzled on debut, but patience essential for such a young star

When Sam Konstas was nine, he dreamed of playing cricket for St George at Hurstville Oval one day. It was good enough for Don Bradman, after all.

A decade later, on Thursday, he found himself in the middle of the MCG, opening the batting for Australia against the might of India. Playing audacious ramp shots off the bowling of Jasprit Bumrah, no less, on his way to 60.

Sam Konstas had a debut for the ages on day one of the Boxing Day Test at the MCG.Credit: AP

Konstas is Australia’s youngest-ever opener and the fourth-youngest Australian man to make his Test debut.

It was to be expected (the success, maybe not the ramp shots) for those who had been paying attention. The 19-year-old already had a century against India, clocked up in a tour match for the Prime Minister’s XI last month. That followed centuries in each innings of a Sheffield Shield match for NSW a month before.

And that followed the chance meeting that began Konstas’ swift ascent: a chat between the Australian under-19 assistant coach Dan Christian and NSW selector Geoff Lawson in 2023. As Lawson tells it, Christian told him “very clearly” at the under-19 tour to England in 2023, “This kid Konstas, he’s 17, but just put him in the shield team and leave him there. He’s going to be so good!”

The head coach of that team, Anthony Clark, had seen Sam come through the NSW pathways system and made a similar observation to Lawson that Konstas was “one of the special ones”.

A cheeky ramp shot, one of several, played by Sam Konstas against Jasprit Bumrah at the MCG.Credit: Christopher Hopkins

NSW’s selectors got it right, and their Australian counterparts have followed suit.

But they must be patient – more so than they were with Nathan McSweeney, the 25-year-old he replaced after just three Tests.

When selectors have chosen very young players in the recent past they have most often been right. Ellyse Perry was 17 when she played her first Test. Pat Cummins was 18. Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh 20. Steve Smith was 21. Some were in and out of the team – Waugh for 18 months – but they were and are the cricketers of their time. Ponting and Waugh played 168 Tests each – more than any other Australian.

Go back a little further, as Greg Chappell reminded us in the Herald on Wednesday, and you’ll find Neil Harvey, who dazzled in England during the 1948 Ashes while a teenager, and Doug Walters, who scored centuries in each of his first two Tests as a 19-year-old.

Konstas looks every bit the cricketer of his generation. But every innings is not going to be as breathtaking as his Test debut. Five days ago, in his last match for the Sydney Thunder, he was out for a duck.

Konstas did get to play at Hurstville Oval, for St George’s second-grade team, at age 16. His time at St George, before he transferred to Sutherland, included a century on the famous ground.

Let’s hope he is far too busy delighting international crowds to find his way back there any time soon.

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