Australia’s top-order batting decline puts New Zealand in box seat

Christchurch: Yes, the pitches have been of the sporting variety. The bowling, too, from Shamar Joseph and Matt Henry in particular, has been top class. And it is the end of an intense 18 months of cricket for Australia in which the team has been largely successful.

Nevertheless, the loss of four quick wickets in pursuit of a gettable 279 to beat New Zealand placed the thickest possible underlining marker beneath the following facts: Australia’s Test batting has been on the slide since midway through the Ashes, and a rejig since David Warner’s exit has not delivered the desired results.

Ben Sears of New Zealand celebrates after dismissing Marnus Labuschagne.Credit: Getty

At 4-34, Travis Head and Mitchell Marsh found themselves together inside 15 overs of the chase. It was a familiar sort of feeling, given that Australia haven’t reached 200 before the loss of their fourth wicket since the MCG in December, and in five of nine innings since, the score has been in two figures at the time.

Marsh and Head’s sensible play in the day’s closing overs kept the tourists in the game, and on day four they will have the weight of history against New Zealand – without a win against Australia since 2011 and without one at home since 1993 – for help. But a pair of 1-1 draws against West Indies and New Zealand would put a dent in more than just Australia’s Test Championship chances.

The four Tests after Warner’s retirement were billed as the right sample size to take a look at a configuration with Steve Smith’s move to opening as the most significant change.

That sample now demonstrates the following: four Tests; eight innings; 171 runs at 28.50; highest score 91 not out (the only half-century). The last of Smith’s dismissals, lbw to Henry’s wobble-seamer back into him, was similar to several others – he has found it difficult to cover movement back into him when the ball is brand new.

At the same time, Smith’s union with Usman Khawaja has also seen the left-hander’s returns ebb away, as hard as he has fought for survival in testing conditions. Tim Southee’s one-handed catch to get Khawaja was a classic, and Henry’s delivery very good. Nevertheless, Khawaja will be frustrated not to have passed 50 this series.

Warner and Khawaja had an easy batting chemistry, their contrasting styles married to a decades-old friendship. Smith and Khawaja have made a lot of runs together in the past, but as openers they are yet to find that level of affinity.

Cameron Green’s recall to bat at No.4 has, so far, been the only real win. And even he was swept away in the face of a pair of fiery spells from Henry and the speedy Black Caps debutant Ben Sears. Unsure whether to play or leave, Green dragged the ball onto his stumps.

Marnus Labuschagne’s return to runs here was welcome, but in the second innings he should have been out twice in the space of three balls. An edge into the cordon was turfed by a juggling Daryl Mitchell, before Labuschagne was squared up and miscued a return catch to Sears.

Head, Marsh and Alex Carey have had recent struggles, too, partly created by recurring circumstances in which they have been coming in to bat with fewer runs scored ahead of them. Australia’s batters once spoke of the top three as the engine room, with numbers four to six cast as the “interior decorators”. In other words, complementary.

Whether Joseph or Henry, meanwhile, the fast bowlers whirring in at Australia have sniffed a hint of vulnerability and used the seaming ball to tremendous effect. Pakistan’s seamers, too, had done this, after England’s Chris Woakes started the trend in the second half of the winter Ashes series.

Back in 2019, during his comeback Ashes tour pomp, Smith offered the kind of frankness that sometimes comes from a place of great success.

Matt Henry runs in for New Zealand.Credit: Getty

“My first 20 or 30 balls, I felt pretty vulnerable when they were bowling that good length,” Smith had said in Manchester. “There is no doubt in my mind that the seaming ball is the hardest thing to play in the game. You don’t have time to react, so you have to play the line and if it goes in, you are a chance of hitting the stumps and getting lbw, and if it goes away, you are a chance of nicking it.”

That degree of difficulty has contributed to a pattern that Australia now have nine months or thereabouts to think about. As Labuschagne admitted on the second evening, there is now more information available than there had been in early January. “It’s not gelling perfectly yet,” he said.

One of the hallmarks of the Australian team under Pat Cummins and Andrew McDonald has been calmness and unwillingness to make reactive changes. Labuschagne had spoken gratefully of how, before his innings of 90, he did not feel in any real danger for his spot, such was the confidence placed in him.

In some ways, there is little choice but to persevere.

Smith did not move up to open without stressing his desire to stay there for the duration of his career; Green is clearly the future at No.4. But the team’s great belief in self-correction from the ebbs and flows of a Test career will be sorely tested should New Zealand win this game.

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