Former Australian cricketer Mark Waugh has expressed his views on the Australian team management not taking bold calls and dropping players during the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy against India, saying the team is “not that worried about the future” in the final ICC World Test Championship. Experience is at stake, Fox Sports reports. The series remains level at 1-1 as both teams head to Melbourne for the Boxing Day Test, which begins on December 26. Despite poor form, experienced players such as Marnus Labuschagne (82 runs from three matches at an average of 16.40 with one fifty), Usman Khawaja (63 runs from three matches at an average of 12.60) and Mitchell Marsh (69 runs in three matches with an average of 12.60) average of 13.80) were not eliminated in the next two tests.
According to Fox Sports, Waugh said: “I think they picked the team that won these last two Test matches.”
“They’re not that worried about the future. You always have your eye on the future but it’s a huge series and you’ve got the World Test Championship and that carrot is dangling too.”
“So I think the selectors are thinking about the MCG Test and the SCG Test. Which of our best teams will win these two Test matches?,” he concluded.
Waugh said Australia needed some firepower at the top of the order and couldn’t give up on its experienced stars, so dropping Nathan McSweeney, who had so far failed to score 20 in six innings and had a best score of 39, was “a process elimination.”
“And they think they might need a little more firepower at the top of the order with the bat. I mean, you can’t really throw out one of the more experienced players, so it’s probably Nathan McSweeney just in the process of being eliminated, really,” he said.
Hussey also questioned why Australia made the decision to drop McSweeney despite dominating after a lopsided defeat in Perth in the first Test.
“Another reason why this is an interesting and difficult challenge is that I feel India completely outplayed Australia in the first Test,” Hussey explained.
“But since then I feel like Australia have dominated the Test series, so I don’t know, I was surprised.”
“I was shocked when they made this offer, but it is a positive step to try to be more aggressive at the top of the order,” he concluded.
Team Australia: Pat Cummins (centre), Sean Abbott, Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Travis Head (VC), Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Sam Constas, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Jay Richardson, Steve Smith (VC), Mitchell Stark, Beau Webster
Team India: Rohit Sharma (c), Jasprit Bumrah (wc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, K.L. Rahul, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Devdutt Padikkal, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant, Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar. Subs: Mukesh Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Khalil Ahmed, Yash Dayal.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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