Test cricket in August felt like such a treat.
I cleared my Thursday to watch Australia play Bangladesh, despite the fact we’re in the middle of footy season and I should have been thinking about whether the Crows are going to make the top six.
Instead, it felt like January all over again as I found myself sitting there complaining about our top order.
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And that’s the thing, this isn’t a new problem.
Australia’s top order has been in trouble for years, yet we continue to put the blinkers on to what is happening underneath it.
There will be plenty of discussion now about whether Australia should have bowled first or whether the team is getting too old, but I keep coming back to something that has been bothering me for a while. I’m starting to wonder whether Australian cricket’s selectors have already decided Sheffield Shield cricket doesn’t really matter. Because unless it fits their selection narrative, it seems that way.
I understand why Marnus Labuschagne has been given every opportunity to find his form. He has earned that patience through what he has achieved for Australian cricket. But, there comes a point where you have to stop asking when a player will rediscover the cricketer they used to be and start asking who is the best player available right now.
How long does past performance buy you the right to find form?
And while we keep waiting for established players to find their best, what is happening underneath them? Nathan McSweeney was given a Test opportunity against India but was moved on and hasn’t been given another since despite continuing to perform well in Shield.
Matt Renshaw has continued to put runs on the board consistently with an average of 49.90 in the 2025-26 season. Jake Weatherald didn’t score a century during last years Shield season for Tasmania, yet he was still selected.
I’m not well versed enough to say whether one player should have been picked over another, or that any one selection would have changed the result in Darwin. I’m just asking: what actually is the criteria?
If Shield form matters, why does it seem to matter for some players more than others? And if it doesn’t matter, why are we telling young cricketers that it is their pathway to Test cricket? That’s the part I can’t quite understand.
And perhaps T20 cricket has made this even harder. T20 has changed the landscape of the game.
It brings in the money, audiences and opportunities to players around the world, but it has also made long form cricket compete for attention, time and relevance, particularly for our top-end players. If Test cricket is still supposed to be the pinnacle of the game, then we need to make the pathway to it mean something too.
Because after watching Australia in Darwin, I kept thinking the same thing I have thought too many times before: one of the guys will pull us out of this hole. Travis Head will go mental or Steve Smith will make a hundred. Someone will produce something extraordinary and save us.
Yet no one did. Bangladesh didn’t let us. And I can’t help but think that, time and time again, our top order is the reason our backs are against the wall. It’s so often the reason our middle order need to perform against a new ball, or our bowlers are having to shoulder the brunt of the work to keep us in games.
All the while the answer could be sitting there in Shield cricket, but our selectors don’t seem interested in looking.
If Sheffield Shield cricket is genuinely the audition for Test cricket, then we need to stop changing the casting rules halfway through the audition.
We need to decide what it actually takes to earn a Test opportunity, and then stick to it. Because if Shield cricket only matters when it suits the selectors’ narrative, maybe we should just be honest and admit it doesn’t really matter at all.
