The general mood of the hardcore on the tour groups around the baggage carousel oscillated between trepidation and pessimism.
“We’ll get smashed,” was the bluntest assessment offered as we huddled at the end of the long-haul travel.
Watch Australia’s Tour of South Africa Live & Exclusive on Fox Cricket, available on Kayo Sports.
It felt both incongruous and instructive.
Incongruous as Australia is enjoying an uninterrupted two-and-a-half year stretch as the number one ranked test playing nation and has a sizeable lead in this World Test Championship cycle.
And instructive as this is the misnomer created by the eternal debate about the make-up of the team.
It has long been true that Australia obsesses over Test selection. It is the main frame through which cricket discussion is staged in our country.
Win or lose, amateur selection panels and experts are sharpening axes and baying for change.
I like to think every fridge should have its Whiteboard XI displayed on the door and you should be willing to go to the mattresses for your guys around any water cooler, drip tray or talkback line.
But it does rather make it difficult for the actual selectors to be constantly second-guessed and assumed wrong by 28 million countrymen.
Australia’s most recent series of consequence delivered a 4-1 thrashing of England, which would likely have been a whitewash if not for a faulty MCG pitch.
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It was staged against a backdrop of critical and untimely injury and required some clever boxing.
Yet between the fixation on age, fresh bouts of injury and individual numbers that don’t meet historical markers, you could be forgiven for thinking the touring party to South Africa was either inept or defunct.
It owed to some to degree to the anomalous loss to Bangladesh in Darwin. This was interpreted as the end times rather than the worst of pre-season performances.
The perception of the team isn’t the reality. This is a very good Australian team with the odd hole and a couple of moving parts and nagging concerns.
It has a surplus of world class bowlers who have presented in pristine condition for the trials that lie ahead.
It has cricket’s best wicketkeeper.
But it has an uneven distribution of batters leading to a weakness in the engine room and a production line that is moving slower than desired.
Rather than the team that selects itself, this one takes a bit of hunch and speculation, a bit of prodding and poking. The guiding principle: to pick the collective to win the game at hand against the specific opponent in particular conditions.
In this environment change is natural rather than seismic and challenges a more sophisticated discussion than a player being sacked. The next Baggy Green doesn’t need to be worn a hundred times but to fill the need of the now.
“Harder to get in than get out,” some say. While at the same time others decry: “It’s time to pick and stick and stop messing around.” Both criticisms can’t be true.
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George Bailey runs a panel that makes proactive and provocative calls. The insertion of Sam Konstas altered a series against India. Beau Webster was activated to great effect. Nathan Lyon was dropped twice. No spinner was selected for a Sydney Test. Jake Weatherald was dropped one Test after receiving a central contract. Nic Maddinson was brought from the clouds.
All were contentious, drew ridicule and invited doubt. You can hear Grand Moff Tarkin’s timeless caution: “This had better work.”
The philosophies at play won’t appeal to many.
I believe a Test batting line-up is like the showcase on The Price is Right – there’s a correct order. This leadership does not.
Eminent figures from Greg Chappell to Ricky Ponting believe it’s time to pick for the future. But in this odyssey just undertaken the task is to win. Win in South Africa. Win at home. Win in India. Win in England.
Footy clubs don’t rebuild during Finals series. They hunt trophies.
The selection of Maddinson caused maximum rancour and remains hard to assess.
But the reintegration of Matt Renshaw offers a better study of this brains trust. It wasn’t fourth time lucky. It was carefully staged in a less unorthodox way.
When Renshaw was swept aside in Delhi in 2023, he’d made seven consecutive single-figure scores in Test cricket spanning five years and three countries. Most would’ve given up on him.
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Instead, Renshaw was reengineered through white ball cricket – 24 of his next 25 innings in national colours were with the ODI and T20 teams. He made 684 runs averaging 34, culminating in a century in Zimbabwe en route here, batting largely between four and six.
A young Matt Renshaw was ordained the Test opener of the future based on technique and temperament. Through his time in the wilderness, he honed the requisite power and stroke-making for the short forms. He found new dimensions. His transformation against spin profound.
His Durban masterclass was the fusion of all those qualities. An old school first innings grind followed by a second innings takedown. And it was done in his white ball position rather than his designated role as opener.
We saw the results of Renshaw’s dedication and resilience complemented by incisive coaching and canny deployment – Project Hail Rennie, a carefully orchestrated plan to produce a fully rounded batter ready for national duty at precisely the right moment.
There aren’t many contestants currently correctly predicting the Australian XI from match to match, but the selectors and coach deserve a little more respect and have a few more credits than some of the caustic criticisms suggest.
Not for a moment though should it stop us posting our XI on the fridge – just not with a permanent marker perhaps.
Gerard Whateley is writing for Fox Sports during the South African Tour and leads the SEN Radio Broadcast of the Test matches
