Will Pucovski and Joe Burns, together yet poles apart

Joe Burns and Will Pucovski, Australia’s putative Test openers, have had opposite seasons yet ended up in similar positions.

Poles apart ... Joe Burns and Will Pucovski may miss the opening Test for vastly different reasons Picture: Getty Images

Joe Burns and Will Pucovski, Australia’s putative Test openers, have had opposite seasons yet ended up in similar positions.

Burns is out of form. The whole of Australia knows it. When he was dismissed in the second innings of the Australia A v India A match on Tuesday, he trended on Twitter. What used to be a relatively private ordeal is now almost a form of public shaming.

Pucovski, meanwhile, is out of sync. A month ago he could not get out; in the same match as Burns, he rather struggled to stay in. Had a straightforward slip catch been held in the second innings, Pucovski would have been dismissed cheaply in both innings. His concussion later in the day was the more worrying for his playing Kartik Tyagi’s short ball so badly, fanning a hook from his haunches.

With David Warner hors de combat, it’s now far from clear who will walk out to open next week in Adelaide on either side. India have no fewer than five options (Mayank Agarwal, Prithvi Shaw, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill, Hanuma Vihari) and should arguably have a sixth (Rohit Sharma). None can point to recent success with a red ball, let alone with a pink ball.

It’s a salutary reminder that opening the batting is cricket’s most precarious and unforgiving role. Such are the uncertainties introduced by a new ball and unexplored conditions, failure is foreordained a certain proportion of the time.

Even Warner’s lucrative pageant of a career has involved a single-figure score every fourth innings. Last year in England, he was where Burns is now, a batting accident waiting to happen.

Opening is for stoics, pugilists and masochists. Failure is the more conspicuous for coming first and lasting longest.

Sixty-five years ago, Les Favell was dismissed in the first over of the innings of a Kingston Test, and became a chagrined spectator to Australia’s highest Test total.

“Finally Ian Johnson declared at 8-758 and what a relief that was for me,” he recalled in his auto­biography. “For three days I had been sitting watching everyone joining in the avalanche of runs while the scoreboard had a big round 0 against my name.” It’s a scenario The Grade Cricketer might have scripted.

So it would be a hard heart that withheld sympathy from Burns at present — in his public professions of support, former opening batsman Justin Langer demonstrates a certain fellow feeling.

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Burns has, all the same, reached that stage beyond the early kidology of a scoring slump, where semantic distinctions between being “out of form” and merely “out of runs” are no longer possible.

The Drummoyne match looked like a case of chain failing. In the first innings, Burns succumbed to a hesitant leave; in the second, to a bullish, hard-handed drive away from his body. That’s a batsman unsure whether to stick or twist.

Yet in a way, Burns is Australia’s simpler problem. He is a known quantity; he has had laudable goodwill and ample opportunity, just as he should. His fate is in his own hands.

With Pucovski, the stakes are higher. He is a precocious talent; he is a poster boy for the high-performance system; thrice he has been on the brink of Test selection; twice, voluntarily and involuntarily, he has veered away.

Earlier this season, Pucovski seized the chance to open for Victoria and pushed past rival candidates with back-to-back double hundreds — feats standing out the more for the general dearth of first-class cricket, even if they were on flat pitches in front of empty stands.

The match that began yesterday had loomed as his chance to ratify this progress, and to deal with the white noise of attention. Instead he is a bubble-wrapped, cotton-woolled onlooker — much as he was in Canberra in February last year, when released from the Australian squad after reporting “some challenges” to his “well being”.

The concussion now is being called “mild”, which belies both Pucovski’s visible grogginess at the time, and his disturbing record over time. To have experienced nine concussions before the age of 23, including in the field and taking a run, suggests a worsening susceptibility.

The ICC concussion protocols recommend a seven to 10-day recovery period even for a one-off injury, such as the one Ravi Jadeja sustained in Canberra.

While Cricket Australia’s code is less prescriptive, it’s hard to see how Pucovski can responsibly be included in the final XI knowing what we know, and also what we don’t know, of impact injuries to the head.

The boldest available option would now be to include Cameron Green and promote Marnus Labu­schagne. It could even become permanent: Warner, Labuschagne, Smith would represent the world’s strongest top three.

Reticence about promoting Smith to first-drop is hard to understand when his Test average in that position from 29 innings is 67, while the resulting vacancy at No 4 would in the long term probably better suit Pucovski than going in first. In the meantime, Travis Head has come off handsome hundreds at second-drop against Victoria and Tasmania.

Yet a perversity of modern cricket, in most respects ever more dynamic and flexible, is the regard for Test specialisations. Prime ministers shuffle cabinets more readily than teams shuffle batting orders. Call it, for the former captain’s superstitious attachment to No 5, the Michael Clarke effect. Enter Marcus Harris, who disappointed at his second chance but merits a third.

It has been a strange week, and a testing one for selectors, who might reflect that they have the reverse of the usual problem. Normally round this time they are lamenting a lack of form indicators. Now they seem to have too many, each adding a complicating factor. Opening the batting is a difficult task; ditto opening a can of worms.