Cameron Bancroft’s four-year Test absence has prompted much discussion and debate after consistent performances at first class level
Conspiracy theories abound as to why Cam Bancroft hasn’t played a Test in four years. MARK DUFFIELD and DANIEL CHERNY investigate ahead of a pivotal summer.
Scroll through the comments and you will find an example of the Mandela effect.
The idea that Cameron Bancroft has been banished from the Australian Test side ever since his suspension for ball tampering forms a convenient narrative. Especially given that since October last year, Bancroft has amassed 1457 Sheffield Shield runs, including six centuries, at an average of 58.28, coinciding with David Warner’s almost four-year lean run in which he averages sub-30 in Test cricket with just one ton.
He was the convenient fall guy to ensure superstars and leaders Warner and Steve Smith returned to heroes’ welcomes. Bancroft was expendable. Given a life ban.
But that would be your memory playing a trick.
Because not only has Bancroft played for Australia since his ban ended, he was back at the first available Test opportunity. The West Australian opener played the first two Tests of the 2019 Ashes series in England, a trip memorable for Smith’s heroics and Warner’s struggles at the hand of Stuart Broad.
For Bancroft, 44 runs across four innings led to his omission for the third Test at Headingley, triggering a revolving door of openers including Marcus Harris, Joe Burns, Will Pucovski and Matthew Wade before Australia finally settled with Usman Khawaja and Warner for the bulk of the past two years.
Why then does there remain a gnawing sense that Bancroft has been hard done by, that there has been some sort of agenda at play to stop him getting into the side? Or are the concerns over his game legitimately technical?
These are the facts: Bancroft was far and away the leading Shield run-scorer last season and again tops that tally at this season’s intermission.
His surge back into the national frame came on the back of a chat with Justin Langer two years ago as he searched for the best way forward.
“He just said to go out and bat and if the game asks you to be 10 not out at lunch day one of a shield game then you do it. If it asks you to be fifty not out at lunch you do it,” Bancroft said.
“It was about just being open and in tune with what comes with the match and that thought allowed me to just relax and calm down a bit and focus on the processes that apply to me.
“I am very happy to go out and play my role and do my best for WA. It is a come what may attitude. Test selection – of course it would be an honour to represent my country again but I want to be playing good cricket regardless.
“I have tried to be consistent with things and give myself the best chance. Play my role. That has been my focus 100 per cent this season.”
Langer, a man who knows what it is to be like to be in and then out of an Australian Test team, has no doubt that the more mature version of Bancroft is a better player than the one who played 10 tests for Australia.
“He has made, consistently, a lot of hundreds. You always judge a player on their hundreds because hundreds win games,” Langer said. “You look at his balance at the crease. He is playing off the back and the front foot. The way he plays his on drive now. He plays well in all three forms of the game which tells me he is an improved player.”
When Langer was outside of the Australian Test team in the 1990s trying to bat his way back in, he would often tell the media: “Runs are the only currency the selectors deal in.”
He said that applies to Bancroft now.
“You have got to be so good that they can’t ignore you and he has been so good he is going to be hard to ignore,” he said. “All he can do is make runs. It is the only currency of value – runs and he is making plenty of those at the moment.”
Yet Bancroft was bypassed for the Ashes tour, even as a backup, with Harris and Matt Renshaw preferred.
Conspiracy theories abounded. Was the team off him? A line through Bancroft’s name?
Undoubtedly his interview with the UK’s Guardian in 2021 caused ripples.
Asked for a feature story to mark his county stint if the Australian bowlers knew about the sandpaper plot in Cape Town, Bancroft answered: “I think it’s pretty probably self-explanatory.”
It triggered days of coverage about the saga, and prompted the four bowlers from the South Africa Test – Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon – to issue a joint statement reaffirming that they didn’t know a foreign substance had been applied to the ball.
However three sources close to the team spoken to this week claimed there was no lingering acrimony from those comments.
And if the relationship between Warner and Bancroft was strained by the affair, it was not enough to deter Bancroft from signing this year with Sydney Thunder, where Warner was already contracted.
Peter Siddle, who was on the 2019 Ashes tour, said he didn’t believe Bancroft’s history would count against him.
“You don’t even think about it. That’s the thing, it’s so far gone. He’s been around the side, Dave and Smithy have been in the side from the word go in ‘19, they all came back at the exact same time and played. There’s definitely no issues. No one’s even talking about it,” Siddle said.
“He has evolved a lot, his game’s evolved a lot. So that’s definitely not going to even come into the equation.
“I think we’ve seen that from all countries. From all past players, and especially past captains that have made that mistake in the past, but they’ve all come back and had great careers and it hasn’t changed that thing. It’s definitely not going to play a role in decisions that surround him whatsoever.”
The WACA’s general manager of High Performance Kade Harvey said Bancroft’s ability to just deal with what the game gave him had played into what he views as his greatest talent: “He just loves to bat.
“Damien Martyn or Mark Waugh would get to a point where they would get bored and play a shot that got them out. Bancroft will bat for as long as you let him and then some,” Harvey said.
“His great skill is his ability to face lots of balls and stay in the game. And I think he has always had that. He has the ability to bat time.
“Chris Rogers was the same. You would watch Chris Rogers and think ‘Geez that doesn’t look that flash’ but you would look up at the scoreboard and he would be 130.
“They have the ability to navigate and at the end of the day it is called playing the game, as opposed to technique.”
“Obviously the longer you stay out there the more runs you score – it is something I aim for when I go out there,” Bancroft says.
Langer said the other great asset Bancroft possesses is his work ethic – both as a cricketer and a person.
“He has worked a lot on himself as a person since South Africa. Without question he has got a curious mind,” he said. “No-one has got a better work rate – maybe Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith have got a better work ethic in world cricket let alone Australian cricket. Because of those factors he is definitely a better player.”
Still Bancroft remains on the periphery. He was part of the Australia A series against New Zealand A on the eve of the domestic season, performing modestly, and alongside Harris and Renshaw has been picked for the Prime Minister’s XI match against Pakistan this week that has been billed as a bat-off to find Warner’s successor. That is unless selectors find a way to rejig the order to squeeze Mitch Marsh and Cameron Green into the same Test side.
Bancroft rates his start to the 2023-24 season as “going okay”
“I still feel like I haven’t quite played my best yet. I have found ways to get runs in Shield Cricket but I reckon I can hit the ball a bit better.”
“I would like to think I have improved parts of my game and probably just matured a lot. It is always difficult to qualify that. Cricket can be very fickle. You have your days and you also have your days when things don’t go your way.”
“The more you play, the more experience you get, the more you can apply the things you have learned to the moment and challenges that present themselves. Hopefully I have improved and it has allowed me to have more consistency in my game and how I go about my business.”
In many ways for Bancroft both on and off the field it is about where his head is at. Off the field it is about enjoying it and not getting so caught up that it weighs him down. On the field it is about not getting his head too far over towards the off-side and outside the line of balls darting back into his pads.
It is a flaw from the past he has worked hard to eradicate. Harvey said Bancroft and Langer spent hours working on it last year and “when he has got that right – you can’t get him out.”
It’s all about balance. At the crease and in life.
“Cricket is still very important to me. I care about my performance. I care about learning and playing well and contributing to the team. But as time goes by your perspective on things does change,” Bancroft said.
“The highs – you try and be a bit more balanced and neutral with them and naturally lows and challenges always come in cricket and you just try and keep a perspective lens there.”
“That has probably just allowed me to not overthink too much. Enjoy life when I am not playing the game and that probably has an impact on how I move forward and play the next ball, play the next match.
“I have my days where I do that really well and I still have my days where I become stressed out about stuff. I am only human. I still experience those things too.”
Playing for Australia again? “It would be an honour. Every cricketer has goals and aspirations to represent their country. I feel fortunate that I have done that previously but that desire is still there for me to achieve that again and hopefully take it and perform.”
“It is a goal and it is something I work towards but I know that what allows things like that to happen is to enjoy cricket and play my role for the team and WA and if I do that then the fruits of those actions will take care of themselves.”
Harvey said: “He is a pretty chilled dude now but he is still a cricket nuffy. He still loves it – and you have to. He just loves batting. He is a cricket tragic.”
“He is one of the fittest cricketers you will ever meet, disciplined. All of the things that you want in terms of prep and how he studies the game and how he prepares. He is still all of that. But he is a bit more chilled post-South Africa. It almost forced him to be.
“We always try and help our guys to create their own identity and he was probably one of those guys that you worried about at a young age about cricket being everything.”
“I think he has got a bit more going on in terms of how he views the world and he has chilled out a bit.”
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