Will Pucovski: hook or be hooked?

Feast turns to famine and possibly farce for selectors as Will Pucovski’s future remains uncertain ahead of the first Test.

Will Pucovski after been struck in the helmet during the tour match at Drummoyne Oval. Picture: Getty Images

Are your best XI players — six batsmen, four bowlers, a keeper — necessarily your best team? How do you ignore the looming, immediate talent of Cameron Green? How do you play Joe Burns? How do you navigate the more existential issues when it comes to Will Pucovski?

What will become of Marcus Harris?

How selectors must yearn for those simpler days, not two weeks ago, when the only matter to decide was who to partner David Warner at the top of the order. Before feast turned to famine. Then approached farce.

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It seems as if a player has fallen over every time the team has taken the field: Warner, then in no particular order, Josh Hazlewood, Jackson Bird, Ashton Agar and Marcus Stoinis. Pat Cummins needed a rest. Mitchell Starc has been occupied with matters greater than cricket.

Trying to run two squads, rest IPL attendees and respect Covid conventions has made matters doubly difficult.

If Pucovski is unfit there is one less fark! (sic) in the road for selectors and Australian cricket.

The doctors are the first part of the decision process with Pucovski. If he is still showing signs of concussion over the weekend it becomes a pretty easy one, but if Pucovski’s headaches clear, his health return and the alarm bells stop, the issue becomes the selectors.

Do you throw him out there in front of Jasprit Bumrah, with the pink ball, under the night sky?

Concussion has removed the chance of letting him tune his crepuscular cricket instincts at the SCG over the next three days as planned.

Nobody is going to forget quickly how he got trapped in the headlights of a lesser seamer. Or how quickly he fell, how the gravity of previous blows pulled him toward the turf. Where he was on that shot shook confidence. Those double centuries suddenly became a little smaller in the rear view mirror.

Pucovski has been counselled in recent years to hook not duck. The argument is a good one, if you are playing the shot you are in position, watching the ball, ready. If you are avoiding it you crouch, you are in danger if it doesn’t get up, you are more likely to take your eye off it and make like a turtle.

He seemed trapped between the two options on Tuesday, swatting at the ball as ineffectively as a farmer swatting at a fly.

Helmets are here to stay, so too is the deleterious effect they have had on the art of playing the short delivery. Ian Chappell and others believe firmly that one was compelled to watch the ball more when only wearing a cloth cap, that players get hit more when wearing protection.

The damage when one does get through is too catastrophic to consider their abandonment. We don’t need to see any more cheeks broken, foreheads depressed, eyes blackened or eyebrows opened.

For arguments sake let’s say Pucovski does not play; selecting the team doesn’t get any easier.

There is still the aforementioned day-night match at the SCG from Friday to assist in matters, but the very fact selection can be swayed by batsmen’s last outing proves what a lineball call they are. We should be relying on a body of work here.

At this point you cannot make an argument for Joe Burns, although those that matter have in recent times. The incumbent cannot and has not posted a score in 7, 29, 0. 10, 11, 4, and 0 innings. If he fails in the day-night match it would be reckless to play him just as it would be delinquent to ignore Harris who has made a better fist of the first class season.

At this point you have to find a way to keep Cameron Green from playing and find a way to include him that does not destabilise an XI.

The obvious and easiest solution is to push everybody up a slot. A few years back Marnus Labuschagne made a name for himself by volunteering to bat at No 3 at the SCG against India, let’s see how far you can push the kid.

Steve Smith is the best batsman in the world and should be fine at first drop. If you didn’t want to unsettle the rest of the order you could slip Green in as four.

Or, you could open with Matthew Wade.

The natural order of things which was upset by the injury to Warner and the uncertainty around Pucovski is further upset by the inclusion of Green even if he is clearly one of the best six batsmen in the country.

But if you don’t open with Burns you are left with the most inexperienced pair at the top of the order since, oh, the last time India was here.

Which returns us to that early question: is your best available XI necessarily your best team?

In those mice minds the selectors will attempt to find sleep by telling themselves they can cross bridges when they come, to wait until after the tour match at the SCG, but minds are as difficult to control and have a way of returning to the wheel which, John Lennon told us, go round and round.

Runs to Burns and Harris in this match, however, will be better for sleep than any mug of hot milk.