For all that England have been criticised, Australia deserve a huge amount of credit.<\/p>\n
If England had been told they would play an Australia team without all of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon, they would have been rubbing their hands with glee.<\/p>\n
And yet, Australia pulled off victory in Brisbane with all of their other players standing up.<\/p>\n
Mitchell Starc has been absolutely outstanding, supported by Michael Neser, Scott Boland and Brendan Doggett.<\/p>\n
Alex Carey put in an absolute masterclass behind the stumps, possibly the best wicketkeeping performance I’ve ever seen – and I played with Ian Healy and Adam Gilchrist.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the biggest revelation for Australia has been the shift in the batting order.<\/p>\n
Before the series, when there seemed to be a lot of discussion about the Australia line-up, I said there was only really a debate about one area – Usman Khawaja’s opening partner.<\/p>\n
That debate has been settled, just not in a way anyone expected.<\/p>\n
Ever since Travis Head stuck his hand up to open when Khawaja got hurt in Perth, Australia have looked like a different team. Now, there seems to be the opportunity for Head and Jake Weatherald to cement themselves as the opening pair.<\/p>\n
Khawaja might find it tough to get back in, although Australia coach Andrew McDonald has suggested he could bat at number five.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For all that England have been criticised, Australia deserve a huge amount of credit. If England had been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4101],"tags":[1406,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-622653","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115690973646914802","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}