Hopes for a call on Adelaide Test by Monday

Broadcasters hope a call will be made on whether to move the Adelaide Test on Monday.

Australian captain Tim Paine and coach Justin Langer at Adelaide Oval

Cricket will be forced to make a call on the Adelaide Test sooner rather than later with broadcasters hoping for an answer by Monday. A call on the future of Will Pucovski and Cam Green is also fast approaching.

Any optimism felt when South Australia reported no new coronavirus cases on Thursday was tempered by news that Victoria had joined all the other states except NSW in imposing restrictions on travellers from Adelaide.

The 48-hour ban will stay in place until a permit process is introduced on Saturday night.

If travel between Melbourne and Adelaide was blocked though December it would create problems for production crews and others involved with the tour, with only four days between the Adelaide Test and the Boxing Day Test.

Cricket Australia has planned early for all outcomes, but any decision to abandon plans to begin the Adelaide Test on December 17 will be left to the last possible minute.

Broadcasters need to know sooner rather than later to co-ordinate the movement of equipment and are hopeful of an answer by Monday if not the end of the week.

There is a feeling that Melbourne is the first among fallback options to host the first Test if it can’t be played in Adelaide — with second the second favourite and Canberra a less favoured alternative.

Some argue that Victorians, deprived of football for the winter and unable to see Virat Kohli in the flesh because he plans to leave after the first Test, deserve it.

Adelaide, however, remains the preferred option.

“There’s some pretty scrambled brains at the moment trying to work out what all the contingency plans are,” coach Justin Langer said when the news broke.

“We’ve got to be agile, we saw it throughout the winter with the footy, we saw it with the rugby and the State of Origin. We’ll be agile, we’ve got to be creative and get the summer under way, especially with India out here, the rivalry between India and Australia is awesome.”

Langer, meanwhile, has continued his campaign of letting the public down gently in regards to Pucovski and Green being rushed into the teams.

The coach and selector, like the majority within the group, believe that Matthew Wade and Joe Burns were critical in the rise of the current side and essential to its harmony. Chemistry, however, does not carry the same weight as runs and Burns is under pressure to find the form that justifies his incumbency.

Green began bowling in the most recent Sheffield Shield matches, but is restricted to four overs a match as he comes back from stress fractures. The 21-year-old has remodelled his bowling action and is n a program to build up his workload with the re-engineered approach.

The tall batsman/bowler is in the limited overs and Test squads.

“In one-day cricket he’ll only play if he can bowl a few overs because that’s how we’ll set up the team,” Langer said.

“He hasn‘t had the white-ball experience to come in as a pure batsman, but if he can bowl a few overs, my gosh he becomes a good prospect.

“But Test cricket is different. He’s earned the right to play Test cricket on his batting.

“I love watching him bat. For such a tall batsman, he’s got so much time.”

Green’s recent innings of 197 for WA in the Shield match against NSW came on the back of a breakout season where he averaged 63 and scored three centuries playing as a batsman only.

Pucovski’s 2020-21 began with a pair of double hundreds for Victoria.

“What we are seeing with Will Pucovski is exactly what we want to see,” Langer said. “We talk about knocking hard, he is banging so hard on the door of course he is putting pressure on the other six batters in the team.

“You can’t underestimate, however, stability in the team and we are ranked number one in the world at the moment and a lot of that had to do with the partnership between Warner and Joe Burns.

“We’ll be weighing that up over the next few weeks. We’ll get it right, well, we won’t because half the country will think we got it wrong, half will say we got it right. If whoever it is gets runs then we got it right, if they don’t we got it wrong.

“At this stage and I obviously know the power of opening partnerships, we got it really right the last 12 months or so and it’s going to need to take something very special to change that and Will Pucovski is doing that at the moment.”

Dean Jones, meanwhile, was remembered by the Karachi Kings side which won the PSL T20 in Pakistan earlier this week.

The Australian was appointed coach of the team in March before the tournament was suspended due to the virus.

The side carried cardboard cutouts with signs commemorating Jones during the play-offs and were determined to mention the role he played when they won the championship.

“Dean Jones, of course, gets credit because what he taught us, very few coaches in the world can,“ captain Imad Wasim said. “Wasim Akram, of course, deserves the trophy because he was our bowling coach, head coach, mentor and team president rolled in one. It’s an honour to captain this franchise.”