It didn’t take too long before my phone started lighting up fervently the day the Australian selectors announced the provisional squad for the T20 World Cup.
Most of the messages were from India and they all concerned the same subject: the non-selection of Jake Fraser-McGurk.
And the queries, every one of them laced with a blend of shock and astonishment, ranged from, “Is the IPL not broadcast in Australia?”, “Have you guys and the Aussie selectors not seen what Jake has done here?”, “Don’t tell me the Aussies don’t care about the IPL,” to the very succinct, “Most ridiculous selection call ever”.
There were even raised eyebrows from a couple of prominent Indian cricketers in my messages.
To put the level of befuddlement among the Indian cricket fans over Fraser-McGurk into context, this outpouring of support for the young Australian opener outdid their bemoaning over a contentious selection call much closer to home. Rinku Singh, the diminutive dynamo who’s taken the IPL by storm and already has impressive T20I numbers, had also been left out of the Indian provisional squad on the same day.
Much like with Fraser-McGurk’s explosiveness at the top of the order, Rinku’s power-hitting and finishing abilities didn’t seem to fit in with the overall make-up of the Indian selectors’ plans for the World Cup. There just wasn’t enough room for them in the respective squads of 15. This despite Rinku being, according to many intelligent voices in India, the only pure T20 cricketer that the country has produced since their humbling exit in the semi-final of the last T20 World Cup. And Fraser-McGurk being the hottest property on the ever-buoyant T20 market, having made arguably the most awe-inspiring first impression on the hottest T20 league in the world.
My first emotional response, too, was to get sucked into Roostermania, especially having stayed up nights to watch Fraser-McGurk go berserk with bat in hand, and even on one occasion take down the mighty Jasprit Bumrah. It was totally worth it. It was breathtaking and even Ravi Shastri at times was left speechless due to the 22-year-old’s brazen aggression, most times just sticking to yelling, “Banggg …” on commentary.
But as the days passed, and now that the World Cup squad is officially finalised, you do start to see a lot of reason in the selectors’ rationale behind not taking the plunge on Fraser-McGurk.
It’s got little to do with how talented he is. It’s instead got everything to do with how different it is when it comes to selecting a national T20I squad for a World Cup as compared with picking an XI for a franchise in T20 league cricket.
It’s not an Australian phenomenon and is, if anything, true across the board. Selectors end up sticking with team balance and ethos, even if it might sound a tad archaic to some detractors, over trying to fit in special talents into an already-established and highly successful setup.
So if Fraser-McGurk had to get in, there were only two members of the team he could have replaced. Firstly, at the expense of David Warner. The argument for that was Delhi Capitals, coached by Ricky Ponting, had done it, even getting the Victorian-turned-South Australian to play ahead of Warner, even after the veteran had resumed duty post hand injury. So why couldn’t Australia?
But this is David Warner, the man who played an integral, if not monumental, role in Australia winning their first-ever T20 World Cup in late 2021 and their latest 50-over World Cup only six months back. This is David Warner, who has delivered the goods for his country in the big events throughout an illustrious white-ball career that is about to come to an end next month.
Then you come to the other potential candidate who Fraser-McGurk could have stepped in for, Cameron Green. Here, again, we hit upon a stark difference between shaping up a roster for a franchise as compared with a 15-member tight-knit squad for a World Cup.
It’s commonplace in the IPL for franchises to start with a clean slate and bid massive sums of money for one individual player and try to build the rest of the team around him. In international cricket, it’s the opposite, where you are looking for specific pieces to fit the puzzle that you’ve already constructed, with long-term plans in mind.
Apart from being a long-term investment, Green’s all-round abilities and new-found versatility for Royal Challengers Bengaluru as a middle-order basher and clever middle-over operator with the ball makes him an invaluable addition to a very experienced and together Australian squad. Along with him having already been a part of a World Cup-winning outfit.
There is some irony in the fact Green, himself, was originally left out of the 2022 T20 World Cup squad, despite having turned many heads as opener on an Indian tour, only months before that tournament.
It’s also why Ashton Agar, despite being delisted in terms of central contracts, was always going to be a shoo-in for the potentially slow and low pitches in the Caribbean. Even if he hasn’t played a T20I since October 2022 and wasn’t part of the IPL.
You also then add the element of measuring up starry performances in the IPL when seen through the prism of international cricket. The stakes, from the perspective of both a player and a team, are so vastly different. Whereas every knock in franchise cricket for a batter is a potential audition, every knock in international cricket for him could well be the final curtain call, depending on how his team fares.
Without taking anything away from the likes of Fraser-McGurk and what they are able to achieve in the IPL, there is inherently more security when you’ve got nine other franchises in the league who might see a spark in you, and multiple other leagues around the world, as compared with the one and only national team you can represent. And whether the fearlessness we’ve seen displayed so unabashedly during this IPL season gets replicated collectively in June will be one of the fascinating aspects of the T20 World Cup in North America.
What we do know from his two ODI appearances last summer is that Fraser-McGurk, who will be in the Caribbean as a reserve, probably is that uniquely daring. Despite having not made the cut for now, maybe he is eventually destined to completely alter the way we think about both batting and selections in cricket.
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