The Good, Bad and Ugly | Australia edition ft. Captain Carey, Ashton ‘Turner’ and the BBL Tragedy

By ‘different’ we’re referring to bringing back the almost-extinct ‘Good, Bad and Ugly’ article which, well, also has been as frequent as an Australia victory. Given the Aussies have now finally won something this year - yes, this was their first series win of 2021 - we figured that this would be the perfect time to bring out the GBU that we’d kept wrapped in cotton wool. Let’s go.

Surprise, surprise. There’s an ICC event round the corner and Mitchell Starc is suddenly peaking out of nowhere. Who’d have thought, eh? As it turned out, Starc’s impeccable showing towards the back end of the T20I series was no flash in the pan: he piggybacked off that confidence and ran riot in the ODIs, picking 11 wickets across the 3 matches, six (!!) more than any other Aussie bowler. He swung the ball as if he was in the middle of the 2019 World Cup, was not erratic and delivered wickets every time the team needed one, notwithstanding the stage of the match. The five T20Is against Bangladesh will confirm suspicions, but it does look like Starc is slowly getting back to his best. 

Ashton Turner is bowling again

Ashton Turner is bowling again and it’s fantastic news for Australia, if not for the man himself. Across the three ODIs, Turner endured his heaviest ever workload thus far in international cricket -  a total of 14 overs - and looked every bit of an off-spinner. His spell in the final ODI -  1/23 off 8 overs, which included a maiden - was a thing of beauty and the Western Australian got some juicy drift and turn to bamboozle the Windies batters. Ask Pooran, he’ll tell you. This shouldn’t come as a surprise though, as prior to his shoulder troubles, he was a pretty darn good offie. In the 2012 U19 WC, Turner in fact was the highest wicket-taker for Australia, scalping 11 wickets in just 6 innings. 

Alex Carey looks like he is ready to take over ODI captaincy

If these three games were Alex Carey’s audition for the job of ODI captaincy, then there’s every chance that, within the next 18 months, we could see the South Australian at the helm. Carey had one of the best captaincy debuts in recent memory, looking like he simply just belonged. To inspire this confidence-less, depleted unit to a series win over a full-strength Windies was impressive by all means, but what stood out was his ability to read the game and assess the conditions, and his shrewdness and proactiveness on the field. 

Also integral to the series win was Carey’s batting. He top-scored in the series with 112 runs, and it was his quintessential crisis-man knocks that made the difference in both the first and the third game. With Finch turning 35 in 4 months, Carey couldn’t have picked a better time to show the selectors that he is ready. 

The Bad

Australia did eventually walk out on the other side as victors, but let’s not sugarcoat how hopeless they were against the spinners. 13 of the 23 wickets they lost in the series were against spin, and 9 times the Top 6 batters perished to the slower bowlers. Between them, Akeal Hosein and Hayden Walsh bowled 57 overs and averaged an astonishing 17, maintaining a remarkable ER of 3.87. Between overs 10 and 30, in fact, the Aussie batters struck at under 50 against the two spinners, highlighting their struggles against the slower bowlers. 

That the Barbados wicket was ludicrously tilted in favour of spinners cannot be refuted, but how the Australian batsman handled the Windies spinners, particularly the left-arm spin of Hosein, was alarming. Not just Bangladesh, England and South Africa - two teams that have world-class spinners - too will be licking their lips at the prospect of tormenting this Australian batting unit with spin come the WT20, though it would be bolstered by the return of the big guns. 

Australia’s BBL products with the bat have historically been disappointing at the international level - D’Arcy Short, Chris Lynn, Ben McDermott to name a few - but much was expected of the bowling products, Riley Meredith and Wes Agar, owing to the skill and x-factor they possess. Yet the tour, as a whole, turned out to be a disaster for Meredith and Agar, both of whom looked out of their depth. In particular, Agar, whose 11 overs across the first two ODIs were pretty innocuous. 

Perhaps Agar’s inexperience mitigates his shortcomings, but the horror tour of Meredith, who prior to landing in the Caribbean had already got a taste of both international cricket and IPL, should serve as a cause for concern. Across the ODIs and T20Is, Meredith’s 12.5 overs cost 141 runs (ER 11.28), with his x-factor not proving to be effective at any point in the series. Fair to say that Meredith, at least, has bowled himself out of WT20 contention. 

The Shambolic showing of the Sixers duo

Sydney Sixers winning back-to-back BBL titles was down to a lot of things, but both Moises Henriques and Josh Philippe were integral to the double title charge. At completely different stages in their respective careers, both Henriques and Philippe made their way into the national set-up this year, and the tour of the Caribbean was being viewed as potentially career-turning for the senior, and almost certainly career-defining for the junior. Now, a month on, how they’d be wishing to turn back time and have a second crack at the tour.

Deriving conclusions on the basis of 8 matches (six in the case of Philippe) is probably harsh, and most likely inaccurate, but both Henriques and Philippe do look like fish out of the water at the international level. While for the elder it looks like his best days are behind him, the younger one seems too green for the highest level. And it should ring alarm bells in Australia, given the two have been dominating the country’s premier franchise competition.