Preferring player with potential over the one in hand

Ag Cricinfo

Will Pucovski has had more concussions than first-class hundreds, and now he’s in an Australian cricket squad. Anyone who has seen him will understand why: square of the wicket, he’s top-class; he builds innings and he bats time. Is he good enough for Test cricket? No one knows.

But he could be great. Potential is the heaviest word in sport.

That’s what Australian cricket has always been looking for. And that is what Cricket Australia, especially, is looking for. In private, those involved have declared this to be a competitive advantage over a nation as large as India and its enormous talent pool.

They are looking, they have always been looking, and they will probably always keep looking for what they refer to as once-in-a-generation talent. What it really means is ten-year players. Having a few of those at once is the surest way to build a number one team.

Australian cricket is built on the back of finding the young bloke who plays the game the right way, getting him into the team, and seeing him become a household name. Australia’s success is built on the back of a lot of young guys who were sacrificed to the gods of Tests before they were ready. Shane Warne recently said in the Herald Sun: “Australia has always had a history of getting young players in who have shown signs they can play. From Doug Walters to Ricky Ponting, the list goes on. We’re a country that likes to get them in - let’s not make them wait, just get them in.”

What Australia don’t rate, and never have, is the bridge player. The player who comes in late in his career to take a spot that’s open. No one expects them to hang around. They are just there until a younger, or better, or younger and better, player comes along.

No one fits this template better than Tim Paine. After an early Shield double-hundred, he was seen as a ten-year player. He made his international debut at 24, but he was not in the team for almost ten years because Brad Haddin was in place as wicketkeeper, and a series of finger injuries destroyed Paine’s confidence.

Then he was back, first as a stand-in keeper and then, after the ball-tampering scandal, as the short-term captain. Paine is a temporary keeper and temporary captain. He is the bridge player in the right place at the right time.

When Australia lost to South Africa in 2016, Matt Renshaw was brought in as an opener. All doe-eyed and long-limbed, he looked Dorothy-like, shocked by the weirdness of the yellow brick road. His scores of 10 and 34 from a combined 183 balls were applauded, maybe not as much as Usman Khawaja’s 37, and not as ridiculously as Rob Quiney’s 9, but there was serious Renshaw hype. Even as it was clear he had a limited game, Australians wanted to believe. Nine Tests later, with a string of scores below 50, he was gone.

Renshaw sat out of Tests as Australia tried six other openers (he returned for one Test after Sandpapergate). He was good enough to play as a kid and make 184, but then suddenly he wasn’t among the best seven openers (if you include David Warner) over the next couple of years.

So how good would Pucovski have to be to last longer than Renshaw’s 11 Tests? He has played fewer first-class games, would have to survive an Ashes, and would need to play twice as many Tests as he has done other first-class matches. The press, the spotlight, analysts and bowlers all get ten times more stringent in Test cricket. A bad shot in a first-class game is a bad shot. A bad shot in a Test match is back page.

Pucovksi is 20, and batsmen who bat in the top six at that age average 31. And to play at that age, you are usually seen as a potential great, meaning even the most talented young players rarely succeed when that young.

How well does he need to know his batting to survive under the limelight, let alone prosper? Not to mention that with Warner and Steven Smith most likely coming back, there will be fewer spots to grab, meaning even decent performances will be judged harshly.

Like Renshaw, no one believes Pucovski is one of the best six batsmen in the country yet. But that’s not how once-in-a-generation works in Australian cricket. It’s more like the witch trials: dump the kid in the water of Test cricket, and if they float, they have special powers, and if they don’t, well, our bad.

Many teams believe the best way to train people for Tests is to play them. That as much as first-class cricket can help, it doesn’t prepare you enough. Alastair Cook recently pointed out that county cricket is a front-foot game, while Tests are back foot. For years the wickets in Tests were flat, while the bowlers who succeeded in first-class cricket often did so on friendly wickets made to ensure results inside four days. There are many in the game who think spending too long in first-class cricket can ruin the techniques and skills needed for Tests.

We also know that since Test cricket is harder, it’s far more likely that experienced players will succeed. The prime batting years in Tests are 27 to 29, according to research by independent analyst Mainuddin Ahmad Jonas. We also don’t know how many of those players are in their prime in Tests as much because they played the format earlier.

Australian cricket is hardwired to think this way. Other nations believe in schoolboy or underage cricket; in Australia, they only respect boys when they play against men. This means getting the young lads into Tests and seeing what they have, which makes Australian selection a constant lottery.

Cricket fans are obsessed with selection the way football supporters are obsessed with managers, US sports devotees with the draft, and golfing buffs with equipment. Once you have picked your best eight or nine players - which is usually pretty straightforward - the other two selections are relatively unimportant. The players chosen first will always have the biggest say in a game.

Most cricket writing in the world is not writing on the sport but writing about who is in danger of losing their spot and who should come in next. The international fixture list is so vast it’s almost impossible for writers or fans to see the players in the level below. But it doesn’t stop the conversations. According to Kartikeya Date, no team of the same 11 players has ever played together more than 11 times. So teams are in near-constant change, and we obsess over most of it. Over 50% of Test cricketers play seven Tests or fewer.

But when you break down international cricket, there are basically three kinds of selections. Future ten-year players you hope will end up on your version of a Wheaties box. Bowlers are often in this position, as teams have always taken a flyer on bowlers. Then the role players: a spinner for a turning track, your best player of fast bowling for the tour down under. And finally, the bridge players. This is the reductionist way of looking at roughly 3000 Test players; it doesn’t include teams taking punts on allrounders, for example.

If you look at the Australian team of recent times, you can see these different styles. Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood were anointed future stars at a young age. Players like Chadd Sayers, Jon Holland, Steve O’Keefe and Shaun Marsh were selected based on certain conditions. And Peter Handscomb and Chris Tremain were form picks.

Paine was a ten-year pick early in his life. He became a role player when Haddin was injured, and now he’s a bridge player. His current selection is because Australia had run out of keepers. No one expects him to be there for five years. He will either fail, and they will look for someone else, or he’ll do well but be replaced by a longer-term option.

That’s what bridge players do. They bridge the gap from your last long-term player to your next. They are players in form, no matter their age or reputation, but not players in your long-term plan, because you expect them to be found out, or replaced, reasonably soon.

Australia have always looked down on such players. If a player isn’t young, there is very little excitement shown when they are being picked. And Australia have found special talent in every generation, almost always overlapping, which is why they have been a consistently good team for most of the game’s history.