Selection missteps back Australia into a corner ahead of second Test in India

Y ou go to war with the army you have – so goes a piece of unintended wisdom from Donald Rumsfeld as cycled through Natasha Lyonne on Russian Doll. Like any good motto leaning towards truism, it’s something you can take beyond the literal and apply to the trivial. It’s a phrase that you can mutter as you plough into the passport queue at a seething airport, or glance at the other adult trying to control an eighth birthday party.

For our purposes, it can apply to any sporting situation dealing with a lack of resources. Billy Beane could have slotted it into Moneyball, just as it fits for a visiting Test cricket team in Delhi this week. They may have been soundly beaten in the first Test in Nagpur, but Australia couldn’t then and can’t now pick a raft of quality spinners or quality players of spin against India because those players don’t currently exist.

What Australia did have was the chance to choose troops who were at least fit and healthy to tackle the job. They chose not to. The initial touring party of 18 looked ambitious in size, covering every eventuality and supposedly reflecting the planning that had gone into this tour. But Mitchell Starc brought along his finger tendon injury from just after Christmas. Cameron Green brought the snapped index bone from the same match. Josh Hazlewood has had a bad Achilles since the Sydney Test that followed. Unless Mitchell Swepson and Jessica Thorpe have had an incredible stealth pregnancy, he would have known he had to leave the tour.

Throw in the way that Ashton Agar has lost rather than gained confidence in his bowling since the pre-series camp in Bengaluru, effectively barring him from selection, and Australia’s group of 18 has shrunk to 13 for the second Test. Batter