Australia are set to have an unchanged playing eleven for the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne, with head coach Justin Langer alluding to the same unless there are any changes forced upon them last-minute.
“I’d be a pretty courageous man to change the XI for this Test match after the last one,” said Langer. “At this stage unless something happens over the next few days – and it can happen in the world we live in – we’ll go in with the same XI, I’d say.”
With David Warner already being ruled out for the second Test, the opening pair of Matthew Wade and Joe Burns is set to continue at the top. Langer said that Warner was not fully up to the mark with his running as yet but was hopeful of getting him back later in the series.
“We got some selection conundrums every game one way or other. Davey had a good hit yesterday, he’s a bit way off with the running. We know how dynamic he is, there’s no one more dynamic in the game with the running between the wickets, with the way he fields. He wants to make sure he’s 100% fit so he gets great energy personally and as a group e get energy out of that. But these things with selection have a funny way of working themselves out. Who knows, we can try and hypothesize as much as we want this far out. But my experience is, selection has a funny way of working itself out when it comes to the time you have to do it,” he said.
On the pressure that this will put on the likes of Burns and Wade, with Warner waiting in the wings to make a comeback, Langer suggested the competition augurs well for Australian cricket.
“That’s all part of the journey of every individual player, you’re literally under the pump every time you play for Australia. Every player is, that’s how it should be. We know we’ve got competition, I find myself repeating it over and over, but it’s so healthy for Australian cricket. It’s tough when you’re in the top 6 batters because you’ve always got people knocking hard on the door to take your spot. So you got to be on the toes all the time. And equally so for the guys on the outside, you’ve got to bang so hard to get an opportunity. So it’s really healthy.”
