Once stable, now a liability – the story of Australia’s reeling number three batsman

Is Khawaja the answer to Australia’s batting woes?

The ageing kernel of players soon retired and those who didn’t even receive a chance had quit already. This left the selectors with not enough to experiment with, and they forcefully slotted in a string of unproven batsman, only praying it would pan out right. It didn’t or hasn’t yet, and Cricket Australia is on the brink of total disaster.

An ambitious yet ponderous look at this could be how in the 2000s, many teenagers took up Aussie Rules football or rugby instead of cricket, with greater assurance of sporting contracts – given that for twelve years, not more than 30 players donned the ‘Baggy Green’. This sounds strange at first, but it could be a factor considering that Australia consistently bloods less experienced candidates into its cricketing sides. This has even affected the availability of choices for different facets of the game – be it bowling, wicket-keeping or batting.

As Cricket Victoria’s Shaun Graf, whose interview with Fox Sports Australia captured headlines a year ago, said, “We live in a fast food society where kids want instant gratification. Playing cricket stretched over six hours on a Saturday is too long for some. No doubt it is becoming more difficult to get kids to play the longer games because it becomes an impost on their time.”

There can be other suggestions than what Graf thinks that could explain Australia’s inability to replace its once luminous top order, which revolved around the crucial number three position.

It was always going to be difficult to pluck a suitable player to fill the shoes left behind by Ponting. But the selectors lingered waywardly to stick with one player at number three. Just conceding their worst record in recent memory of six consecutive Test defeats, Cricket Australia might just need to force their consciences to stick with Usman Khawaja at number three or someone else per say (be it Ed Cowan), given it has far less to lose now in esteem.

Unsurprisingly, that hasn’t been the scenario, with as many as nine batsmen being trialled in at number three since Punter called it quits. Now, with the duo of Graeme Swann and James Anderson wrecking havoc on the Australian batting order, it might be smarter to allow a player to get accustomed to that position than constantly dwindling with the lineup.

Usman Khawaja isn’t the world’s best batsman at the moment, but he surely was Australia’s in the second innings at Lord’s. It just might be signs pointing towards sticking with him for longer than the management actually has.

At the beginning of this Test series, Ricky Ponting predicted a 2-1 Aussie victory in this Ashes series, and he chose to stick with it even after the first Test defeat.

You don’t need an Albert Einstein to point out what Australia has done wrong so far in this Ashes series. It has evidently been their batting failures, which puts even greater onus upon the anchor role at number three to hold the sail steady.

By the fifth Test, if England is to seal a 5-0 whitewash, the ever-deteriorating image of Australian cricket might be enduring its worst low ever. But we might also begin to wonder if they have finally found a stalwart at number three. Or like how the past seven months told us – quite clearly, NOT.