Australia’s humiliating nine-wicket loss to Bangladesh has accelerated calls for regeneration of its ageing Test team with opener Jake Weatherald and the inconsistent Marnus Labuschagne in the firing line.
The clash in Darwin had been touted as a mismatch after Bangladesh crumbled to an innings defeat in their only warm-up game and went into the first Test without injured pace spearhead Nahid Rana. Former captain Ricky Ponting, who scored more than 13,000 Test runs, said it was time for tough decisions.
“I’m the last one to want to make change,” he said when the Test was in its death throes. “The 1-2-3, as Ricky and I will tell you, are absolutely fundamental to the set-up of a batting team,” former opener Matthew Hayden said. Josh Inglis was the spare batter for Darwin, but skipper Pat Cummins said selectors could look for alternatives outside the 13-man squad, acknowledging the batting failures were “a little bit of a trend”.
“As a captain or as a player I wanted to keep a group together, so it has to get to a bad point before I start saying you’ve got to leave somebody out.
“You have to bite the bullet at some stage,” Australian great Mark Waugh said while former opener David Warner, whose place in the team has proved hard to fill since he quit in 2024, added: “I think we’ve got to start blooding some youngsters.”
