Ashton Turner selection: A move destined for failure

Not just on a personal level, but, the impact of the Western Australian’s knock reflected on the entire team, a team that was longing for confidence. A team that had won just 3 of its previous 15 ODIs, would then go on to win 14 of its next 15, all thanks to the bravery, courage, self-belief and phlegmatism of one young man. Ashton Turner’s 84* at Mohali played a bigger role in Australia’s rejuvenation more than anyone would have ever imagined. 

But that’s all there is to the story. 318 days have passed since that mad night in Mohali and yet, that remains Turner’ sole contribution to Australian cricket. In the aftermath of the shock and frenzy of Mohali 2019, you could have never seen it coming. The Turner we saw in Bengaluru on Sunday - having had to scrap for four runs, almost giving away the impression that he’d forgotten how to bat, before being put out of his misery by Navdeep Saini - was not the Turner we knew, nor was he the one we expected him to become. It was the innings of a man who had hit rock bottom in terms of confidence, had self-doubts and didn’t want to be there. Split your screen into two and play the Mohali and the Bengaluru knocks side by side, you’d know what I’m talking about; the sheer juxtaposition of the two would be mind-boggling. 

Turner’s downfall, in a way, begun from the very next match post the Mohali ODI: For starters, he was left out of the team for the Pakistan ODIs and in the four innings that followed his Punjab blitzkrieg, he could only manage scores of 20, 0, 0, 0 and 3. And after being subsequently left out of the World Cup squad, the Western Australian decided to undergo a shoulder reconstruction injury to fix a long-standing problem that’d been stopping him from both bowling and throwing. Little did he know, however, that he would return as a shadow of himself post the surgery. 

In four innings post his surgery, in the Sheffield Shield, the 26-year-old returned scores of 3, 1, 6 and 4. And whilst he started off the Marsh Cup relatively well, with a fine 52, his form took a deep plunge, there, too, scoring just 83 runs in the 4 innings that followed. To put things into perspective, when Australia announced their ODI squad to face India on December 17th, there were 28 other batsmen who’d scored more runs - and picked more wickets - than Turner; there was no reason for them to pick him and it wasn’t justified. 

Throwing a batsman down on confidence, let alone form, in the line of fire and expecting them to get the job done is as good as expecting your barber to give you a good cut without speaking a word; it will never work out. It was also the very same reason why a certain KL Rahul, back in the Australia tour, looked like a farmer who was asked to bat after being given a new pair of white clothes. By picking Turner for the India series, the selectors laid out a red carpet of shame for the youngster to walk on and be publicly abashed.

Memories are what makes the sport special, but at 26 years of age, Ashton Turner must be making - and not cherishing - them.  His career, at this point in time, is threatening to become a mere memory, and it is the collective responsibility of both the player and the management to ensure that it does not. Ashton might have played a key role in turning the fortunes of his country around, but he, now, is in desperate need of doing the same for his career.