It would really be something. A Victorian spin bowler – one from St Kilda Cricket Club, no less – walking out on Boxing Day to play an Ashes Test in the shadow of the Shane Warne Stand at the MCG. Todd Murphy is not much like Warne in most respects: quiet, modest, thoughtful, bespectacled, a student of the even tempered practice of off-spin bowling rather than the lavish excess of leg-spin. But still. The links that do exist are too appealing to ignore.
Not that Murphy is guaranteed to play the fourth Test in place of the injured Nathan Lyon, with Australia’s coach, Andrew McDonald, prevaricating about whether to pick four frontline fast bowlers plus an all-round seamer in Cameron Green or Beau Webster. But in picking him as the lone option in the squad, Australia have already given their spinner more positive feedback than Shoaib Bashir has received from England, who have repeatedly referred to him as their No 1 choice while leaving him on the bench for all four Tests so far.
That support could do a lot for Murphy, who excelled on debut in India in 2023, then would probably have been the matchwinner who sent Australia 3-0 up in England had multiple catches not been dropped in the deep while Ben Stokes was looking to take him down at Headingley. England rebounded to 2-2, and whether causative or not, Murphy’s domestic performance tanked before injuries crept in. Despite all this, and left-armer Matt Kuhnemann’s success in Asia, this selection says that Murphy is still seen as Lyon’s principal successor.
The recent interest in all-pace bowling attacks, though, is a curious fascination of the current regime. They have gone that way in two of Australia’s last four Tests, Jamaica and Brisbane, but there’s no clarity on whether it was necessary: both were day-night games, easy wins, and only three seamers had much impact in any given innings. The MCG has been more pace friendly in recent years, and selectors may have memories of Scott Boland destroying England in two-and-a-half days during the previous Ashes visit, but last year’s match against India topped 400 overs and Lyon bowled nearly 50 of them.
This is before you factor in the opposition, a team full of players who find it hard to resist trying to clear boundaries, facing the scrutiny of having already lost the series while batting on the biggest playing surface in the game. Jos Buttler pretty much waved the white flag on his Test career on this ground in 2021 with his early slog to the deep from Lyon. India should have drawn that Test last year until the final session when Rishabh Pant pointlessly tried to launch Travis Head. Spin tempts mistakes, and selecting a team without the option is one in itself.
However it pans out, England will be back to facing a more modest attack now that Lyon has had hamstring surgery and Pat Cummins will go back into cotton wool thanks to his recent back problem. The Cummins story is extraordinary, doing months of rehab to come back for a single Test in Adelaide, produce a decisive bowling effort in each innings while captaining the win that clinches the trophy, then deciding that effort was enough. With no Test cricket scheduled until August, the captain could play if needed but will pass up the chance of two more Ashes Tests in favour of caution.
The bowling then will be Mitchell Starc, Boland, and if not Murphy, two of Michael Neser, Brendan Doggett, and another comeback-trail candidate in Jhye Richardson. While on paper this should give England an opportunity, in practice they couldn’t win in Perth or Brisbane facing variations of this attack. The condescension that English pundits showed Boland before the series has been returned to them via the windpipe as he bowled 18 overs for 35 runs to do the bricklaying for the Adelaide win, after damaging bursts in the previous two Tests.
Australia’s batting, too, will face some shuffling. With McDonald keen to keep wicketkeeper Alex Carey at No 6, and Steve Smith to come back at No 4, Josh Inglis and Usman Khawaja have to scrap for the spot in between them, and the all-rounder’s spot will shuffle down to No 7. That low in the order is more likely to suit the versatile Webster than the wooden starting style of Green, even though selectors would like to give Green a bit more leeway as their long-term project player.
This match may be superfluous to deciding the series, as it was in 2021, and 2017, and 2013, and 2006, and 2002, but huge crowds will still roll in throughout every available day. England will have the distant challenge of sorting out scrambled heads and finding the motivation to get past their natural deflation. Whatever the scoreline, though, Australia’s players won’t be short of that. They still have two Ashes Tests to enjoy, and still have plenty riding on who can perform.
