Wellington, March 4 (IANS): Following his career-best 174 against New Zealand in the Wellington Test win, all-rounder Cameron Green could prioritise playing more red-ball cricket domestically over white-ball matches for Australia to prepare well for the big Test series against India later in the year at home.
Green was left out of Australia’s T20I series against West Indies and New Zealand so that he could turn out for Western Australia in the Sheffield Shield match against Tasmania in Hobart. It was a move which worked well as Green rescued Australia from 89/4 with a counterattacking 174 off 275 balls, also his highest score in the format.
He also shared a 116-run stand for the last wicket with Josh Hazlewood, while hitting 23 fours and five sixes as Australia got their first innings total of 383, which was crucial in setting up the base for a 172-run win to go 1-0 up in the two-match Test series.
Australia’s next international home summer will kick off with ODIs and T20Is against Pakistan, followed by a very important five-match Test series against India.
"He's become an all-three format player and we thought his greatest challenge was flipping between the formats. We felt that by keeping Cam in one format for a period of time gave him the best chance, and that won't always be the case with everyone.
"Other players can go (more readily) from one-day international cricket into Test cricket, and it's probably the more experienced players who have done it over a period of time. It's a big decision to leave anyone out of international cricket when they're potentially in the best eleven, so I'm glad he embraced that when we had that conversation with him, and the return on it is pretty immediate," aid McDonald to reporters.
"The next stress point on that will be next summer, leading into the Indian Test series where we've got Pakistan in ODI cricket and T20 cricket. I'd like to probably err on the side of preparing him through red-ball – we know how good a white-ball player he is, so you put a priority on what it looks like next summer.
"The white-ball cricket's important, but geez that Test summer's important, so I think with the results he's had (at Wellington) he'll probably come to us and say 'can you give us a couple of Shield games before the first Test against India?'," he added.
India emerging victorious in the 2018/19 and 2020/21 Border Gavaskar Trophy triumphs in Australia also adds up to the necessity of Green focusing more on red-ball cricket as a solid number four batter, seen from his outstanding 174 at Wellington.
"His preferred position, as we've seen in Shield cricket, is number four and we think he can be a long-term option there. This is a big step towards that. The conversations are that he's a quality player, and the statistics that everyone was looking at early in his (international) career probably didn't reflect the player that was in front of us."
"I think we've seen a snapshot of that now, and the public has been able to see what we've seen over a period of time," signed off McDonald.
The second Test between Australia and New Zealand will be played at Hagley Oval from Friday.