Marginalising first-class cricket has led to a paucity of batting talent

Matthew Wade’s last Test half century was at the Gabba in November 2019. In 14 subsequent hits, he has averaged 27.5.

Matthew Wade’s poor form opens a door but no one is knocking. Picture: AFP

The leg-side strangle: it’s a terrible way to get out. Only the run-out may be worse and, even then, one may caught short of the crease by a piece of brilliance. Feathering a glance is to pile bad cricket on bad cricket, and spend the rest of the day rueing it.

Alas, then, for Matthew Wade, the Australian batsman most in need of runs who left them out there yesterday in just such a fashion. Mohammad Siraj had just dismissed Marnus Labuschagne with a surprise lifter few could have played safely; Wade caught up with a gimme most batsmen would have welcomed as a way of getting off the mark.

For at least a month, then, Wade will be a 33-year-old specialist batsman with 36 Test caps and an average of less than 30 (as of yesterday 29.87). That’s assuming he is chosen for Australia’s next Test in South Africa, about which if there is not now doubt then there should be.

Wade’s Test career, which stretches back to 2012, divides into halves: a first phase whilst wearing the keeping gloves in which he averaged just under 30, a second whilst not in which he has averaged just over.

It is a transition unique in Australian Test history, and with few parallels: West Indian Clyde Walcott played 15 Tests as a keeper averaging 40, 29 Tests as a batsman averaging 65.

But Walcott was a great cricketer giving in to a bad back; Wade is a serviceable cricketer who renounced his position behind the stumps in furtherance of consideration as a batsman, the keeping job having passed to his Tasmanian contemporary Tim Paine.

The irony is that when Wade lost his place as a gloveman, he actually seemed to have made solid strides: in his last Test with the gloves against Bangladesh in September 2017, he made three smart stumpings. It was his batting at that point that had let him down.

Wade’s return to the colours for the Ashes of 2019 came a little like Paine’s in 2017-18, not long after his despairing of another chance to the degree of contemplating life post-cricket. Rewarded for good domestic form, he took his opportunity with a flinty zeal, including hundreds in the first and last Tests of the series.

Since then, however, stasis. Wade’s last Test half century was at the Gabba in November 2019. In 14 subsequent hits, he has averaged 27.5.

Averages tend to be indicative rather than definitive: two not-outs in that sequence may have led on to substantial innings. But it’s arguable that what has kept Wade ensconced are two things: the long-term paucity of Australian batting talent, and the steady marginalisation of Australian first-class cricket. There aren’t enough good young batsmen to play in four-day cricket that isn’t happening anyway.

The next best are either biosecurely confined (Will Pucovski, Travis Head, Moises Henriques) or idling in the Big Bash League (Peter Handscomb, Joe Burns, the brothers Marsh, Kurtis Patterson, Matthew Renshaw).

This season’s Sheffield Shield hiatus began on November 11; it will not resume until February 12. What even is the competition any more? As a real-time guide to selectors, it has become almost entirely useless.

With a domestic cricket structure that militates against change, Wade has become the Tasmanian devil you know. And to carry on choosing him has been to invest in a certain approved image of the team: tough, gutsy, unselfish, hardworking etc.

Witness the coach’s regular paeans of praise for Wade’s fearlessness, whether it’s facing Neil Wagner last summer or acting as ersatz opener this.

Witness the regular commentary around Wade’s non-stop chuntering at short-leg, tickling the stump mics, titillating the media. It’s been a one-man prolongation of Australian performative toughness, post-Sandpapergate.

Aussies have always reserved a certain esteem for the knockabout cricketer without airs, abrasive edge and all. No bad thing, actually, for examples make up a solid hall of fame. But would Wade have kept his place had he been clean-shaven, quietly-spoken? Like, for example, Peter Nevill …

Ultimately, in any case, only two things matter.

Firstly, does Wade rank in Australia’s best six batsmen? Is he a better player, for example, than Usman Khawaja, not a year older and with eight hundreds from 44 Tests to Wade’s four from 36? Could you imagine Khawaja holing out to mid-on in consecutive Tests the way Wade did in Melbourne and Sydney?

Secondly, is Wade improving? If his average is less than 30 after more than eight years, is there reason to think it will jump to 45 over the next eighteen months, which Australia is entitled to expect from a number five? There seems general agreement that Australia is a first-rate bowling side held back by inconsistent batting, but a curious reluctance to do much about it.

It’s also worth entertaining the arguments in favour of Wade’s retention, which, stripped of the machismo quotient, are mainly to do with continuity given the desire to accommodate both Pucovski and Cameron Green.

The balance of promise and experience in a team is always delicate. Selectors, too, should always err on the side of providing a player one opportunity too many rather than too few. The only question now is whether Wade gets that last chance or whether he has had it.