<\/p>\n
Choosing Test cricket teams can be a fraught business. Competing claims and agendas create the conflict that makes selection a staple of reporting on the sport. When a team rarely changes it reflects either a limitation of resources or a period of rare stability. Australia\u2019s men\u2019s team is currently enjoying the latter. Aside from some tweaks for Asian tours, in the last couple of years the team sheet has been pro forma.<\/p>\n
It is the same again for the upcoming World Test Championship final and Ashes campaign, according to the squad that covers the first three of those six Test matches in England across June and July. From those 17 names the first-choice XI is an easy pick. David Warner may be running out of road, but he and Steve Smith are still the batting mainstays, first-choice picks for a decade. Usman Khawaja\u2019s late-career revival has made him indispensable as an opener.<\/p>\n Marnus Labuschagne and Travis Head have spent the four years since their last England trip proving themselves as generation next. Cameron Green\u2019s bowling has some advances yet to be made, but he has the materials to be the true all-rounder that Australian cricket has hungered for since Keith Miller used to open the bowling and bat five. Alex Carey has consistently done enough to be unchallenged with the gloves.<\/p>\n The stability of the first-choice bowling is even more rare. Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood as the pace battery, with Nathan Lyon as their spinner, first teamed up in November 2017. Since then they have played 22 Tests together, a record never exceeded by another bowling quartet.<\/p>\n The configuration hasn\u2019t been seen much lately though, and that\u2019s where the question of reserve players gets interesting. Hazlewood was the most durable of the bowlers earlier in his career but has had repeat injury problems in recent years, even as Starc has gone the other way. The last time the quartet joined forces was for the first Test of the previous Australian season. Hazlewood has been unavailable for seven of eight matches since. Starc missed three with a broken finger. Cummins missed two for family reasons. Lyon may seem immovable, but keeping a bowling attack on the park is no sure thing.<\/p>\n All of which makes it perplexing that the Australian selectors have a fast bowling back-up plan of: Scott Boland. That\u2019s it. An excellent competitor, but despite appearances to the contrary during his dramatic bursts of wicket-taking, he is only one man. Pick up a second injury at late notice, and Australia will either be turning to Mitchell Marsh\u2019s mostly modest mediums, or Todd Murphy as a second spinner on a Birmingham greentop. Luckily there is no history of Australian bowlers suffering mishaps during the morning warm-up at Edgbaston.<\/p>\n