BREAKING: Matthew Renshaw Added to Australia Squad

PL on team movement ahead of second Test

Australia looks set to make changes to the batting line-up following its poor performance in Darwin, with Matthew Renshaw added to the squad for the second Test in Mackay.

Both Jake Weatherald and Marnus Labuschagne are in the selectors’ sights after the loss to Bangladesh, but the opener is most likely to make way for the new squad member.

There had been speculation that Nathan McSweeney, Kurtis Patterson or Renshaw could be brought into the side.

Weatherald scored 23 and 0 in the first match and has struggled to establish himself in the side.

Labuschagne has been in an extended slump and has not scored a Test century for three years. David Warner has a more recent Test hundred.

It seems more likely that Weatherald will make way for the Queenslander who made his debut in 2016 but has only played 14 Tests, his last in 2023 in Delhi. He moved back to the top of the order this summer after a stint in the middle, scoring three centuries and averaging 49.9 for his state.

While coach and selector Andrew McDonald said the panel would not react emotionally or panic following the loss to Bangladesh, change seemed inevitable.

“There was some change to Jake in terms of his where he lined up and his movement patterns,” he said after the game.

“It’s always hard to critique small sample sizes to whether (it) holds up. He dragged one on and drove at one in the first innings and was dismissed, so it’s probably harder with that small a sample size to say, ‘Yep, that’s going to hold up under pressure’, but there was some change.”

Labuschagne made 259 runs at 28.77 last summer, and has not scored a Test century since the fourth Test of the 2023 Ashes series at Old Trafford.

As Et Al reported yesterday, the coach has called for him to deliver.

“We want runs. That is the bottom line,” McDonald said.

“And how he makes them - it was 31 in the second innings - and up until the point he got out, you would say, ‘Geez, he is looking good. He is clipping the ball off his pads. He’s getting through the ball down the ground’, so it is easy for me to sit here and try to defend that, but ultimately it is 31. It is not a big score.

“He’s lacked runs. He feels that. We feel that. We’re working incredibly hard as a coaching group … we’ve got to get the best out of Marn as well.

“He’s had a bit of a lull. He knows that, he’s gone to work and I think we saw some change in the way that he played, so that’s good. So some of that work that he had done feels as though it’s stuck up under pressure … but he needs some big runs. But it is 31. He is disappointed with that. It is a missed opportunity. He needs some big runs.”

Josh Inglis, who played in Brisbane and Adelaide during the summer, is also in the squad.