Adelaide Test to transform cricket boys to men

Meet the future of Australian cricket. He is a suntanned, 20-year-old opening batsman from Queensland.

Matt Renshaw at the Gabba in Brisbane yesterday. Picture: Jono Searle

Meet the future of Australian cricket. He is a suntanned, 20-year-old opening batsman from Queensland. A precocious talent who made his state debut at 18.

And he was born in Eng­land.

Matt Renshaw is one of the young players who represent the greatest gamble in Australian cricket for over three decades.

There is blood on the walls. Five players from the horror ­innings loss in Hobart against South Africa last week have paid the price and been axed. That’s one for each loss the side has piled up over the past five Tests.

If the team loses the match starting in Adelaide on Thursday, it will equal the worst consecutive losing sequence since the 1880s, when Australia lost seven.

Much is asked then of the young men on whose shoulders ride the fortunes of chief executives, managers, coaches, selectors and the future of cricket.

NSW opener Nic Maddinson is another surprise call-up, while Victoria is celebrating the inclu­s­ion of Peter Handscomb.

Brace yourselves: the select­ors are begging your patience. This is going to take some getting used to. The golden era is over. The mining boom ended. Our natural resources apparently exhausted.

The Australian cricket crisis has sparked the greatest change to a mid-series team in living memory. It’s Brexit, Trump and the GFC cricket-style.

Adam Voges’s late-life experiment is over after 20 Tests. Peter Nevill has to hand the wicketkeeping gloves back to Matthew Wade. Callum Ferguson and Joe Mennie got to bite the apple but have been dropped after one match beneath the baggy green. Joe Burns has also been sent back to state cricket after a one-match recall.

The selection panel has opted for Renshaw to open the batting. “It has happened so quickly,” said Renshaw, who replaced Queensland teammate Burns in the Test side.

“A week ago I was playing grade cricket for Toombul (in Brisbane) — now I could be playing for Australia.”

Renshaw, like the steel girders in the Sydney Harbour Bridge, hails from Middlesbrough. The jeering you hear right now is from English cricket, long used to being pilloried by Australia for its reliance on imported players. The old enemy now has some real ammunition, as Renshaw emigrated only in 2008. While he admits “a while ago I used to barrack for England’’, he says: “Now I watch Australia beat them 5-0, that’s nice to watch.”

Peter Handscomb and Nic Maddinson at the SCG. Picture: Gregg Porteous

The opener is the sort of young talent Australia once prided itself on. At 18, he was the youngest player to make his debut for Queensland since Martin Love in 1993.

Love scored the best part of 17,000 first-class runs but only managed five Tests because he had the misfortune to come of age in an era when only the elite made it in Australian cricket.

Victoria hasn’t quite removed the chip from its shoulder, but is celebrating the fact that Handscomb has been rewarded for his double century against NSW at the SCG with a call-up.

People in the southern state complain bitterly that the NSW mob get a baggy green when they get their state cap, so the selection of the talented 25-year-old should do something to alleviate that jaundiced jealousy.

Chairman of selectors Rod Marsh resigned last week and his replacement Trevor Hohns is pleading for calm. “Patience will be required but we are obviously hopeful that these players can gel together and ultimately stop the downward losing momentum,” he said yesterday.

“We need everyone to get behind these blokes, to encourage and help them in what is going to be a very testing time for them.”

Hohns signalled that the selection panel had picked the new team in consultation with captain Steve Smith.

“The captain has been thoroughly canvassed and informed of our intentions re the selection of this team,” he said.