Durban: A simmering feud between Australia’s current and past Test cricketers has been reignited by Travis Head, in a pointed riposte to criticism of the touring side’s recent batting displays and the surprise selection of Nic Maddinson.
Speaking ahead of Australia’s main training session to an audience that included former Test opener and ABC commentator Phil Jaques, Head made plain his displeasure at the way the team had been targeted by past generations.
Most recently this was epitomised by how Matthew Hayden had attacked the selectors for picking 34-year-old Maddinson seemingly from nowhere to be in contention to play at Kingsmead this week.
“I think it’s unfairly judged a fair bit from a group of past players, pretty much that put the bullet through a lot of players, which I think is unfair,” Head said. “But that’s what they’re paid to do. Some of them need a job, so they go after us, and that’s totally fine.
“This group is strong enough to deal with those sorts of things. That’s how it is. It’s unfortunate sometimes to have some of that feedback from a generation of players that we have huge respect for, but that’s the caper.”
The generational divide between current practitioners and their forebears moving into commentary has long been a part of professional sport, but the Australian team has worn more barbs than most since Justin Langer resigned as head coach in 2022 after mounting discontent from the team about his volatility.
“They’re a very proud bunch of guys who went through a bit of a sticky situation with a few years ago, where they stood up and were pretty proud about one of their own,” Head said of that episode. “But in saying that, we’re playing for the same cause. We have huge respect for it.”
Hayden’s latest blast arrived last week when Maddinson was called up.
“Where we are at is that we are promoting the greatest pile of mediocrity that we’ve seen in a generation of cricket,” Hayden said on the All Over Bar The Cricket podcast. “And if we continue to lay that out and expect that a bloke averaging 35 is going to average 55 in Test match cricket, George Bailey and Tony Dodemaide, you are dreaming.
“I will just put it that simply. You are frigging dreaming. And you are piling up this dog shit explanation, and you are, in my opinion, disrespecting first-class cricket. Absolutely dead set you are. You should be picking guys that are averaging 45 or more, and you can’t, because they don’t want to play.”
Head argued that prevailing pitch conditions at domestic and international levels made the simple comparison of batting averages difficult.
“If you go through Sheffield Shield numbers 20 years ago, they look a lot different,” he said. “Darren Lehman averaged 57, I think, for South Australia, scored 20,000-odd runs. Who’s doing that in Shield cricket these days? Like, who’s peeling out 1200 runs, 1400 runs? I don’t think it’s down to lack of skill.
“Like, [Lehmann] is the exception because I think he’s probably the best Chesterfield player to ever play the game. It’s probably a poor example, but there’s guys that aren’t putting out the same numbers, and it’s pretty obvious to see what the wickets were like back then to now.”
Head also noted recent discussion about him moving down the batting order to No.5 after a trio of low scores in the August series against Bangladesh.
“I have laughed at a fair bit of it because if a traditional opening batter had pushed out the same sort of numbers in his first 20 innings, I think he’d be pretty safe and not talked about in the way that it has been talked about,” Head said. “But I think that’s a bit of the media these days: it’s not so much a good day, bad day, it’s a lot of headline stuff.
“Had a great summer, missed out first day in Darwin, and I’m no good at it again. So that doesn’t bother me the slightest. If people want to read it and are happy and not having a dig, but people are going to click on it if it’s drawing the line through someone.
“I’ve played long enough to know that that happens. More of that will happen Friday if I open the batting and miss out. The same question marks. Vice versa, if I play well, they’ll probably still think I should go to five. But that’s up to you guys.”
Head also appraised Maddinson’s abilities, and the benefits of choosing mature players for Test cricket.
“We need mature guys that know what they need to be doing,” he said. “And I think that revolves back to why we’ve been so good over a period of time, and why Australian cricket was so good back then in that era. Because you bring in the Mike Husseys of the world who are 30, who have tried and tested and know what they need to do, and mature and know the blueprint and know what they need.
“Whether that’s going to result in runs, the game is so hard. But if you know you can have the same person rock up day in day out with the same attitude, more often than not you get good results, and that’s what makes a good team.”
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Daniel Brettig is The Age’s chief cricket writer and the author of several books on cricket.Connect via X.
