You almost never want to be at the centre of Australia’s cricket conversation. Occasionally a player gets the spotlight for a good reason, like a run of form that is such deep purple that it leaves smoke on the water. But far more often, the move to centre stage is due to audience dissatisfaction: the desire to express angst about who isn’t playing well, who is getting an unfair advantage, who should already have made way for a worthier candidate unjustly confined to a lower grade of competition. Marnus Labuschagne is the latest occupant.
Cameron Green has never made it to the middle of that spotlight, but in recent months he had started to nudge into its circumference. Throughout his career he has been described as a player of potential, seen in terms of what he can be rather than what he is. The idea of a two-metre fast bowler who can also smash hundreds is compelling. But at some point players of potential have to deliver on it.
Green debuted in 2020, the year is now 2024. He has played 27 Tests, as many as serious cricketers like Bill O’Reilly, Bob Cowper, Darren Lehmann and Bruce Reid. So there was public dissent after David Warner’s retirement in January, when the batting order was unconventionally reshaped to accommodate Green at No 4.
Steve Smith being considered undroppable meant that Smith moved to open, denying a chance to credentialled reserve openers Cameron Bancroft, Marcus Harris and Matthew Renshaw. Those who didn’t like the move had essentially one question in two parts. Why should all this be done for Green? And what has he done for us lately?
Which was a bit unfair, given Green’s significant performances at six: his 77 against Sri Lanka when the ball was ragging in Galle, 74 on a green Hobart pitch against England with a pink ball, 79 against Pakistan in a series decider in Lahore. Each dug Australia out of a serious hole and helped set up a Test win. His four-hour unbeaten 51 on the MCG with a badly broken finger was not essential to beating South Africa, but showed toughness.
Still, useful fifties rarely stick in the broader memory like hundreds, and all of those innings were in 2022 rather than a quieter 2023. Until this week, there remained the sense of waiting for Green to deliver something unambiguously significant. The Wellington Test produced it: 208 runs in the match for one dismissal, while the rest of Australia’s listed top seven collectively scored 178 for 12.
It was also about the way runs came. Green started his innings in less stodgy fashion than often in the past, keeping calm while four colleagues fell, working out how to bat with the lower order, adding substantial partnerships for each of the last four wickets, managing the strike with aplomb, attacking at the right moments on a tricky surface. The five sixes he lumped over the leg side looked effortless given his power, and there were moments of deftness like steering a wide yorker behind point.
There was something that has not always been a feature of Green’s Test batting, a nimbleness of thought in contrast to his bulkiness of frame.
Nathan Lyon was the other big performer with ten wickets, but he told ABC radio that he was happy for his teammate to be awarded player of the match instead. “He’s had a bit of pressure on him, and probably a bit of self pressure as well, but he’s gone back to WA, got a hundred there batting four, and come here. I really hope his confidence can go to a new level, because he’s a class player and he’s got the full support of that change room. We see so much potential in Cameron it’s not funny.”
Lyon is at the opposite end of his career to Green, with perhaps a few years left. But like his teammate, he is still on a trajectory of improvement. The off-spinner has been talked down in the past for being a specialist bowler with a career average in the 30s, but his last few years have brought that number steadily down. Before the India tour of 2017 it was as high as 34.07, while this week it has dropped to 30.35, its lowest point since his early days in 2012.
That sequence pretty much breaks his career into halves, with 63 Tests up until that India visit in 2017 compared to 65 since. The first period returned 228 wickets at 34, the period since has seen him take 299 at 27. So far in four matches this year he has 22 wickets at 17.
If seeing younger players develop their potential is a spur for older players to keep exploring theirs, then the combination is working for Australia. Green has shown that he is up to the level. The next challenge is to meet it again, and again. As Labuschagne now knows, the sweep of the spotlight is never far away.
