Australia opt against rolling the dice with stability key to Ashes squad selection

C hoosing Test cricket teams can be a fraught business. Competing claims and agendas create the conflict that makes selection a staple of reporting on the sport. When a team rarely changes it reflects either a limitation of resources or a period of rare stability. Australia’s men’s team is currently enjoying the latter. Aside from some tweaks for Asian tours, in the last couple of years the team sheet has been pro forma.

It is the same again for the upcoming World Test Championship final and Ashes campaign, according to the squad that covers the first three of those six Test matches in England across June and July. From those 17 names the first-choice XI is an easy pick. David Warner may be running out of road, but he and Steve Smith are still the batting mainstays, first-choice picks for a decade. Usman Khawaja’s late-career revival has made him indispensable as an opener.

Marnus Labuschagne and Travis Head have spent the four years since their last England trip proving themselves as generation next. Cameron Green’s bowling has some advances yet to be made, but he has the materials to be the true all-rounder that Australian cricket has hungered for since Keith Miller used to open the bowling and bat five. Alex Carey has consistently done enough to be unchallenged with the gloves.

The stability of the first-choice bowling is even more rare. Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood as the pace battery, with Nathan Lyon as their spinner, first teamed up in November 2017. Since then they have played 22 Tests together, a record never exceeded by another bowling quartet.

The configuration hasn’t been seen much lately though, and that’s where the question of reserve players gets interesting. Hazlewood was the most