This was published 6 months ago
Green shoots on show: Cam’s ton makes No.4 Test spot his own
By Daniel Brettig
Welington: This was the reason Steve Smith volunteered to open the batting for Australia.
Cameron Green’s delivery of a terrific Test century at No.4, defying a green seamer at Wellington’s beautiful Basin Reserve, was the best indication of a successful transition for the Test team beyond the generation of Smith and Usman Khawaja.
Cameron Green hits out during his century against New Zealand on Thursday.Credit: Getty
A tally of 9-279 by the close was far from ample for Pat Cummins’ team. But it gave them a foothold in the match after being sent in by Tim Southee, in conditions that remained lavishly helpful for seam and swing bowlers throughout.
Smith and Khawaja did a significant portion of the hardest work in the first session, combining for a scratchy but determined stand of 61 as New Zealand’s new ball bowlers erred fractionally too short in the conditions. Only seven of the day’s first 130 balls would have hit the stumps.
Helped by the grass coverage, but also the extra lacquer and seam reinforcement it has gained in recent years, the Kookaburra ball held much of its shine well into the evening session.
Those attributes were best exploited by Matt Henry (4-43), a seam bowler of good pace who has evolved into a quality bowler at Test level.
But he and others will regret not whirring down more deliveries in the first two hours that landed in the zone where Khawaja was bowled at the day’s midpoint, tempted into a drive and then beaten by late swing between bat and pad.
Southee’s first five balls of the Test match were navigated safely enough by Australia’s new opener Smith.
His sixth, which shaped to swing into Khawaja then zipped away off the seam to beat the outside edge, was rather more representative of what was to follow. This was tough Test cricket, in which Green acquitted himself best of all after a couple of quiet Test matches against the West Indies.
In Brisbane, he had been somewhat unfortunate to be bowled off his arm by the effervescent Shamar Joseph at the start of the collapse that delivered one of the game’s most memorable finishes.
A return to Western Australia’s Sheffield Shield team, for a century against Tasmania at Bellerive Oval, did more than acclimatise Green to a picturesque southern Test venue with a prominent grass bank for spectators. It got him into rhythm.
That sense of balanced ease at the crease, so often seen from Green in Shield ranks and occasionally during his 26 Tests to date, had been somewhat lost during a hectic 2023 when he played in India, then the IPL, then the England tour, and then ran drinks for most of the World Cup.
It was a sequence that brought some bizarre opprobrium from Western Australia when Green was effectively recalled ahead of Cameron Bancroft after David Warner’s retirement, but there was no doubting the selectors’ belief.
The panel’s chair George Bailey had noted that Green’s progress would not always be linear, but that he had already done more than enough to assure the national team’s planners that he was the best young batter available by a wide margin.
Steve Smith edged Matt Henry for two boundaries in his first over.Credit: Getty
“His domestic record is superior to anyone who has played over the last little period, albeit that he hasn’t had the opportunity that much,” Bailey had said. “[We’re] really confident that just [by] continuing to expose him he’ll get better and better, learn more about his game. But, like any player, I don’t think it’s going to be a straight line. [I] think there’ll be fluctuations throughout as there always is.”
Walking to the middle of the Basin shortly after lunch, Green was more decisive than Marnus Labuschagne and Travis Head, both out cheaply either side of him. He was also more positive in scoring intent than Smith or Khawaja, who were resolved to survive until conditions got easier – though they never quite did.
From a wobbly 4-89, a series of handy stands with Mitchell Marsh, Mitchell Starc, Cummins and Nathan Lyon took Green into the 90s. In the day’s last over, he slogged, slapped and cut Will O’Rourke for a trio of boundaries to reach three figures in commanding fashion.
When he got there, Green mimed an uppercut and let out a yelp of delight before raising his bat to Smith and company. A year ago, Green’s first century against India in Ahmedabad was a case of beating the opposition and his own nervousness rather than the conditions.
This one, on a day when no one else passed 50, was concrete evidence that Green can own the vital number four position for the next decade.
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