“The same people in that changeroom are the same people that will be in Adelaide,” McDonald said in the aftermath of one of Australia’s poorest performances on home soil in recent memory.
When asked if Marsh had pulled up well after bowling 17 overs in three days, the most he has delivered in a game in three years having bowled just four overs in all cricket over the past eight months, McDonald was cautious. “We’ll wait and see,” he said.
The coach did not think that Australia had been caught short with bowling options in Perth, due to Marsh’s fitness, despite taking just 16 wickets on a surface where India managed to take 20 easily while restricting Australia to just 104 and 238.
“No we didn’t feel that [was a weakness],” McDonald said. “We knew that Mitch [Marsh] was slightly underdone coming in but I thought the performance in the first innings was satisfactory.”
The coach was pressed further on whether the same XI would feature in Adelaide, and whether Inglis could be considered to replace a specialist batter.
“We’ll assess that as we go along, but as I said the squad that’s in there, they’ll be in Adelaide,” he said.
“That’s an ongoing discussion and that ebbs and flows in players’ careers, so at the moment he’s in one of those patches and no doubt he’ll be getting critiqued externally,” McDonald said. “But internally we’re really confident that, at his best, he’s the player that we need.”
Beyond that, there are not many batters in Shield cricket who are posting huge numbers to build a case for Test selection, in part because of the difficulty of domestic pitches. But McDonald was confident the talent was there if needed.
“I think there’s been enough players banging down the door,” he said. “I feel as though we’ve got some depth there if called upon. I think sometimes people look at the pure numbers of what’s happening in Shield cricket, but it’s sometimes hard to get a connection with the surfaces they’re sometimes playing on. So we feel as though we’ve got ample players available if called upon.”
McDonald added a review of the Perth performance would centre around whether Australia’s failures with both bat and ball were down to poor planning or poor execution.
“It’s always a combination,” McDonald said. “We felt as though our planning going in was where we needed it to be. Execution in amongst that is always a question. We were comfortable with the plans. Clearly the method with the batters and the way they’ve been challenged is always going to be a learning moving forward. So we’ve got some challenges, no doubt about that.”
Alex Malcolm is an associate editor at ESPNcricinfo
