Marn not overboard – yet - Labuschagne benefits from Australia’s loyalty program

Marnus Labuschagne was the Daly Cherry-Evans of Australian cricket this week. He could have been picked and flicked but Test selectors are more willing to respect, protect and select a loyal servant.

Why retire in the summertime if you’re Usman Khawaja or Nathan Lyon? Naught selection wolves are at Khawaja’s door. Here’s a stroke of good fortune with its elbow up and foot to the pitch of the ball. Lyon bowls offspin. Here’s the least physically demanding of tasks. A man can bowl offies forever.

Cast your eagle, cricket-loving eye down Australia’s team sheet for the World Test Championship final against South Africa. You might only assemble an older group of codgers by plonking Noah and Methuselah in the middle order.

Next season’s five-act play called the Ashes has long loomed as a farewell bash for one or two of these fantastically flannelled fools at the Captain Cook Hotel after the Sydney Test, mirroring the departures of Rod Marsh (aged 36), Greg Chappell (35) and Dennis Lillee (34) from the same gorgeous ground in 1984, and the final bows from Glenn McGrath (37), Shane Warne (36) and Justin Langer (35) in 2007, but there’s no reason for Khawaja and Lyon to declare just yet.

Australia's Marnus Labuschagne plays a controlled shot through the leg side at Lord’s Picture: AP

The Australian XI at Lord’s has a collective age of 363 years, up there with dear old things on the Dad’s Army TV show, and the eldest of the eldest statesmen are the 38-year-old Khawaja and 37-year-old Lyon. They’re most likely to be eyeing off the retirement paddock or the commentary box, basically the same thing, unless you’re Steve Waugh, who was cool enough to live his own life, and yet there’s no reason for balding veterans to depart when Australia’s cricket selectors are more loyal than their counterparts at the Queensland Rugby League.

The Maroons’ on, off, on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again pick-and-stick policy in State of Origin is dead as a dodo, as my kingly colleague Andrew Webster highlighted the other day, but Cricket Australia’s panel is more willing to respect, protect and select. Exhibit A is Marnus Labuschagne.

He was the Daly-Cherry Evans of the Test team. The panel had every right to sack him. He’s averaged in the 20s for two years and should probably have been flicked like cigarette ash a year ago. He retained his place for the WTC decider, at the expense of erratic youngster Sam Konstas, because the panel is loyal to long time-time servants and you never know when a player like the 30-year-old Labuschagne, still a veritable spring chicken, or Cherry-Evans (aged 36), will rediscover former pomp and glory.

Daly Cherry-Evans became the first Queensland captain in 30 years to be dumped midway through a State of Origin series Picture: Getty Images

Hate to keep nitpicking about the Maroons’ flicking their picking-and-sticking culture, but Cherry-Evans’ treatment was a moment worthy of an obituary in The Courier-Mail. An editorial stating the unceremonial dumping of an Origin captain after one game, after years of banging on about loyalty, is deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances, RIP, and the body of pick-and-stick will be cremated and taken to NSW.

The loyalty towards Labuschagne was in such stark contrast. He’s fortunate Australia keeps winning, of course, while Queensland keeps losing at the Blues’ new fortress: Suncorp Stadium. The Test XI is strong enough to carry a passenger out of faithfulness, but Labuschagne’s form has been worse than Cherry Evans’s. I reckon if DCE was a Test cricketer, he’d still be in the side. If Labuschange was a Queensland Origin player, he’d have received the old heave-ho from the Lord’s balcony.

Selectors can choose and enthuse about Khawaja because regardless of the laconic lefty being worryingly long in the tooth, and regardless of amplified scrutiny of any failures at his age, nobody in Australian domestic cricket is banging down the door for his job. And so he may as well keep it to the Ashes and beyond. Lyon, meanwhile, can roll his arm over into his next decade.

If Kelly Slater can win the lung-busting Pipe Masters at 50, and LeBron James can play for the LA Lakers at 40, surely an offspinner who never breaks out of a glorified walk has no cause to call it a day. A handful of steps to the crease, a rolling of the arm, and then a flick of the wrist … the beguiling craft doesn’t exactly require superhuman fitness and/or strength.

My old Sydney University team had a wonderful bloke and left-arm offspinner called Mick O’Sullivan, who was hitting a decent length in first grade into his mid-50s. Enthusiasm is more important than endurance in this vocation.

You could bowl respectable offies all the way to your grave. You’re nearly playing darts for a living. Perhaps Lyon is only just warming up.

Nathan Lyon is in the twilight of his Test career Picture: Getty Images

The loyalty program afforded Labuschagne stems from the fact he was in the Australian XI at the start of the two-year WTC cycle. It was decided he deserved the chance to finish the job.

I’d have picked Konstas but you have to respect the sort of devotion Cherry-Evans was denied. Even Edward John Smith, as captain of the Titanic, was allowed to go down with the ship.

“I think part of the factor is that Marnus is a somewhat known quantity and our selectors are probably showing they’d rather give someone an extra little run than pull the pin too early,” Australia captain Pat Cummins said on the eve of the Lord’s Test.

“Marn’s played some crucial knocks in getting us here. Looking back at the MCG (innings of 72 and 70 against India last year), his batting was right up there as a difference in that match. I think it’s part of rewarding those guys who got us here.“

Marn overboard? Not yet. But he needs runs in England.