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Brad Haddin was batting at No. 6, a position Adam Gilchrist was rarely asked to fill
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Doug Bollinger, Brett Geeves, Bryce McGain, Steve Magoffin and Nathan
Hauritz were the Australian squad members who watched on from the
dressing room in Durban. There was plenty of variety in the group: a
left-arm fast bowler, two right-arm seamers, a legspinner and an
offspinner. There was just one problem - five spare bowlers, no extra
batsmen.
It didn't matter at the Wanderers or Kingsmead but on the first day at
Newlands it came back to bite Australia when Marcus North was struck
down with a bout of gastro and spent the night before the match in
hospital on a drip. A team that had spent the first two Tests looking
so well-balanced it was like it had been set with a spirit level was
suddenly off-centre.
In one sense it gave the selectors an easy decision as they had spent
the past few days trying to work out how they could squeeze the
legspinner McGain into the side while causing minimum disruption to a
successful team. But what it really did was expose a big hole in what
was otherwise a strong squad.
The selectors were widely praised for the solid touring party they
picked for this trip and their good judgment was borne out in the 2-0
scoreline leading in to this match. But there's no avoiding the fact
that they've been caught out by the lack of a spare batsman. An
appropriate touring group isn't just about the starting XI; there
needs to be balance in the back-up tier as well.
As it turned out Australia replaced North, a man with a first-class
batting average of 44.09, with McGain, a genuine tailender whose
average is 11.50. Brad Haddin was forced to move up to No. 6, a
position that his magnificent predecessor Adam Gilchrist rarely
occupied in Tests, and Andrew McDonald found himself at No. 7.
And what happened? They battled to 209, which was their lowest
first-innings total since the 2005 Ashes. South Africa bowled well and
were at their liveliest for the whole series so maybe an extra batsman
wouldn't have made a difference. But when Australia found themselves
on similarly shaky ground in Johannesburg it was North at No. 6 who
anchored the comeback.
"Obviously the balance of the team is slightly different," the opener
Simon Katich said after a day when he top scored with 55 and two of
the top five made ducks. "[North] has played really well for us at six
this series so him not being available due to being in hospital last
night was a big loss."
So while Geeves, Hauritz and Bollinger huddled on the boundary - Magoffin has flown home - with
nothing to do but run drinks and maybe dash away for an occasional
trundle in the nets, prolific scorers like Brad Hodge, Michael Klinger
and Callum Ferguson were at home in Australia with their feet up after
the end of the domestic season. Had the series been alive, it could
have been a costly error in judgment.
The problem stems from the fact that when they left Australia,
McDonald was the incumbent No. 6 having filled that role in Sydney. He
has been a valuable member of the team in South Africa, where his
stump-to-stump bowling has troubled the home side, but he has not
looked like a Test-quality batsman. In Cape Town, not for the first
time this trip, he was outshone in the lower order by Mitchell Johnson
and a familiar tentative prod was edged to slip for 13.
The selectors made a mistake. It hasn't cost them the series and it
will be forgotten as soon as they leave South Africa with trophy in
hand. But in a year when Australia are considering cutting back the
numbers in their Ashes squad, it's a situation that should serve as a
cautionary tale. Five spare bowlers don't equal one batsman.
Brydon Coverdale is a staff writer at Cricinfo