Josh Inglis has been ruled out of becoming Australia’s new Test opener but selection chief George Bailey on Monday said the wicketkeeper’s dominant recent form could soon see him play as a specialist batter in the five-Test series against India starting November 22.
New South Wales coach Greg Shipperd had last week flagged Inglis as a potential Test opener after Western Australia’s No.6 peeled off centuries in consecutive Sheffield Shield matches to begin the season.
The 29-year-old has now scored four centuries in his past seven Shield matches, backing up an impressive run in white-ball cricket for Australia too. Bailey believes that Inglis will be picked as a pure batter in the Test squad when there will be a place available in the future.
“I’ve spoken to Josh on this. Not in the short term, I don’t think that he’s someone that we would be looking to place at the top of the order. But there’s no doubt that the form is really fantastic at the moment … the ability to jump back into domestic cricket and dominate has been fantastic. I think in different series at different times of the year, he would firmly come into the mix purely as a batter the way he’s been going,” Bailey said on Monday.
“If the right opportunity opened up throughout the summer, in the spots where we think he’s most capable of performing, I think he’d be firmly in that conversation as well,” he added.
Sam Konstas, Cameron Bancroft, Marcus Harris and Nathan McSweeney are competing for the spot to partner Usman Khawaja at the top order.
“We’ve got three players who open the batting for their state and we’ve got one player who bats at three for their state – so four top order batters to try and fit into three, so there will be some adjustments there,” said Bailey.
“I think we’ll set that up for the first game, and then if we deem it necessary or feel like there’s something else we want to have a look at for the second game, we may change that. We’re looking for performance. Any time there’s these Australia A opportunities, whether it’s real or not, there’s always the perception that there’s a little bit more pressure.
“Obviously, the standard of cricket is pretty high, so that’s always a great opportunity seeing how players interact in a different team to what they’re used to around their states. All of that’s really important. We’ll have a selector present at both games and we’ll be watching closely,” he added.
Meanwhile, Inglis is among several candidates to captain Australia’s T20I squad for the upcoming series against Pakistan next month. Regular T20I captain Mitchell Marsh and other all-format players are sitting out the three-match series to focus on preparations for the Test series against India.
“We’ve been really clear that we are prioritising the preparation for individuals around the Test summer and that will be the first time that we get that group together. So rather than switching guys in and out and becoming quite messy, it was just deemed more appropriate for a number of reasons to separate them out,” said Bailey.