Gqeberha: Marnus Labuschagne’s Test career is again hanging by the slimmest of threads after he was out twice in a single humiliating day for Australia, as coach Andrew McDonald admitted speaking “on repeat” about the number three’s failure to make big scores.
In perhaps the most maddening of all the 13 wickets to fall on day four at St George’s Park, Labuschagne had got to 39 when he tried to loft spinner Simon Harmer against a strong wind, only to watch the ball hold up nicely for Marco Jansen to claim the catch.
It’s now well over three years since Labuschagne’s last Test hundred, and his ninth score between 13 and 48 in the past 14 innings. In parallel, Cameron Green (abdominal strain) and Josh Inglis (broken finger) will both be fit to play in the third Test in Cape Town, while Cooper Connolly and Sam Harper are also available.
“There’s probably some shots that players need to take back,” McDonald said. “He did a lot of hard work once again, and I think it feels like I’m on repeat around the amount of 30s that he has got, and you would say that’s been a danger period for him.
“What they had there, they had a good partnership going and starting to claw our way back into the game, albeit a long way behind the game from obviously the first innings’ disappointment. Yeah, so for me, when you do that hard work, you’ve got to cash in, and unfortunately, that wasn’t to be the case for Marn.
“So he’d be disappointed. We’re disappointed, and we find ourselves in this situation. What I will say is, we’ve still got six wickets in hand, so there is a long way to go in the game. So we’ve got to conjure up some belief for tomorrow.”
Australia are also facing a troubling scenario for Steve Smith, who was clearly affected by a neck injury in the first innings, and did not bat in his usual spot in the second.
“He’s got a neck issue at the moment, it’s giving him some grief, and I think that was probably something that everyone sort of witnessed in that first innings, and he had to sort of adjust the way that he plays,” McDonald said. “Sometimes he changes his technique when he’s sort of fully fit.
“But he, yeah, he was limited in what he could do, and then yeah, we felt it was best to hopefully get the batting unit through to tomorrow, and then hopefully he’s better placed for that tomorrow.
“You would have seen the physio working on him, so he’ll bat tomorrow. It’s not something that will rule him out of the innings, but it was just that it took a little bit more time than we expected on the back of the first innings.”
McDonald refused to talk about selection for the next Test of the series in Cape Town mid-match, but highlighted both shot selection and the team’s inability to recognise and build partnerships as an issue of significant concern.
“I think any time when anything’s done at that speed, it takes a couple of players to connect and communicate and navigate through that, and we weren’t able to get any partnerships,” he said. “And yeah, we’ve had some of these moments across the journey, so we’re not a perfect batting unit. I’ve never said that we are.
“And yeah, the speed in which that happened, and the momentum that you know South Africa were able to gain through that, and yeah, we didn’t envisage coming here and yeah, looking at a follow-on.
“You do have to give a little bit of credit to the South African attack as well. The way they exposed some of that, some of our deficiencies in that, I don’t take anything away from that. But there was some batter error there. I think we are better than that. But as it sits right now, I can’t defend that.”
Pressed on questions over the likes of Labuschagne, Nic Maddinson and Beau Webster, McDonald said: “I never sit in a press conference in the middle of the game and start to talk about selection for the next Test match. I think it’s too early to navigate through that, it’s something that we do post-match. We’ll work through that process as we lead into Cape Town. So as we sit here right now, there’ll be no selection chat.”
Given their grim position in this game, McDonald conceded that they may have to deal with the unexpected situation of going to Newlands in Cape Town for the first time since the infamous 2018 sandpapergate match with the score at 1-1.
“Those players that sit in that room are still the same players that performed exceptionally well last week,” he said. “I have great belief and trust that the skill sets in that room, in particular tomorrow, can go out there and potentially turn this one around.
“If that doesn’t unfold, then we move into Cape Town and we reload and we go again. A great strength of this group is on significant setbacks, and I’d say this is a significant setback in terms of the way that we played. We’ve been able to respond, and that’s been one of the strengths. So, looking forward to that opportunity tomorrow and further down the track in Cape Town.”
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