Australia’s next-generation Test talent pool full to overflowing
Cooper Connolly heads an impressively long list of young guns that already look entirley capable for taking over from Australia’s veteran stars. The future core is secure. The baggy greens should fit perfectly.
Cooper Connolly just looks the part. Like he was born to don the baggy green. And this is not me saying it. Even if I did agree wholeheartedly with the senior coach at the MRF Pace Foundation in Chennai a few months ago who made the observation.
This was August 2024, and I was there to shoot a feature story for Channel 7 in the lead-up to the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Connolly was part of an Academy team there to play a couple of matches against the Foundation, now headed by Glenn McGrath. It was the senior local coach who’d inquired about the young West Australian after pointing him out to me.
“Look at him. You can’t look more like an Australian cricketer than that. The blond hair sticking out from under his cap, the dirt marks all over his trousers from him diving around the field, and just the way he goes about his cricket. He already looks like he’s there,” is how he summed it up.
I couldn’t agree more. Connolly had it all, just like the Chennai coach described him. And ever since that balmy afternoon, I’ve been imagining the 21-year-old doing a Shane Warne from when he received his baggy green and going, “it fits perfectly”. Or we could say it for him.
With Matthew Kuhnemann having now picked up a worrisome thumb injury that might hinder his availability for the upcoming Sri Lanka tour, we might well be within two weeks of Cooper Connolly becoming the 470th Test cap for Australia in men’s cricket. And he’ll get the nod mainly because of the necessity almost of having a left-arm spinner for the surface in Galle. Along with, of course, his attacking batting and sensational fielding.
Some might argue the only thing he doesn’t have going for him are first-class numbers, having played only four long-form matches, three of which were for his state in the Sheffield Shield. However, as we’ve seen with Sam Konstas this selection committee doesn’t seem too flustered by throwing a youngster into the deep end, even if they don’t quite agree with that phrasing.
That will potentially mean that Connolly will be part of a spin triumvirate alongside the veteran Nathan Lyon, who has already taken him under his wing, and Todd Murphy. The Victorian off-spinner, himself, had only a bunch of first-class matches up his sleeve when he famously made a terrific first impression in Test cricket on the 2023 tour of India. That would also make the blond-haired tyro the fourth Test debutant for Australia in the space of six Tests, starting with Nathan McSweeney in Perth and with Beau Webster at the SCG being the latest.
It’s also a sign of this Australian Test team now officially being in a state of transition or entering into one anyway. And expect there to be more baggy greens being handed out in the coming months and years. For it’s safe to assume that the core of the Test team a decade from now will be formed and formalised during the next two World Test Championship cycles, just like the core of the current world champion outfit was back during a busy two-year period between 2010 and 2011.
It was when Steve Smith, Usman Khawaja, Nathan Lyon, Pat Cummins, David Warner (now retired) and Mitchell Starc all made their entries into the Test arena, with Josh Hazlewood joining them three years later in December 2014. The only cricketers, save Cummins owing to his long injury break, in that period to have played over 70 Tests.
Australia is where they were around the late 2000s, right after the major retirements of the last world-beating core group from the turn of the century. Mitchell Johnson was the only cricketer to go past the 70-Test mark among those who debuted between the end of the Warne-McGrath era, before Smith and his posse came along. That will mean we’ll see a few more Test debutants in the next couple of years, ranging from established Sheffield Shield cricketers like Josh Inglis or maybe even a Henry Hunt to the up-and-comers like Corey Rocchiccioli and maybe even a Lance Morris. They might all end up playing significant roles too in the immediate future, like Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne, both with over 50 Tests now, have since entering the fray in 2018.
But like Konstas and even McSweeney for that matter, the even more exciting entrants will be the likes of Connolly and others like him in their early 20s who will define the next generation of Australia’s men’s Test cricket.
Fergus O’Neill will be right on top of that list, having already won over a lot of fans domestically. I remember being on air during O’Neill’s Shield debut a couple of summers ago and being wowed by the spirit and the self-confidence of the young man. He’s only grown by leaps and bounds since, and might not be too far away from getting the call-up to the big stage, maybe even ending up with a vital role for the 2027 Ashes in England.
Campbell Kelleway is another one to keep an eye on with the classy Victorian left-hander getting more and more into his groove in first-class cricket, with potentially one big season from being in discussions for a Test cap.
Then there’s Queensland’s Hugh Weibgen, who’s yet to play a Shield game but has caught the eye of quite a few with his performances in the under-19 World Cup. So impressed are a couple of the senior Indian cricketers in the Test team that they felt the youngster had been added to the squad as a reserve when they saw him fielding as a substitute during the Gabba Test. “He’s a gun. Keep an eye on him,” one of them even messaged me.
The list of next-generation Test stars is already looking lush with talent coming through from literally every state in the competition. Whether it’s Harry Dixon and Jayden Goodwin at the top of the order, the ever-improving Liam Scott in the middle, Ryan Hicks behind the stumps, or the highly talented Tanveer Sangha. The fast-bowling reserves as always are burgeoning with talent too, from Mahli Beardman, who was briefly a part of the white-ball squad in England last year, to Raf MacMillan and Charlie Anderson.
And like Connolly, they all already look the part. The future core is secure. The baggy greens should fit perfectly.
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