Marsh channels Border to strike perfect balance

Not only is he the most recent recipient of a cherished award bearing Allan Border's name, Mitchell Marsh is increasingly finding himself filling the role that made Australia's most-capped Test skipper one of the game's all-time greats.

Border's reputation was forged during a period when Australia had to rebuild their stocks, with many of his match-changing innings coming against the odds and amid the rubble of top-order chaos.

While the current iteration of the men's Test team enjoys success that eluded Border until the latter phase of his 16-year international career, Marsh has found himself faced by daunting match scenarios more often than not since his return to the Australia line-up during last year's Ashes.

In his comeback Test at Leeds, Marsh went to wicket with Australia 4-85 and on the cusp of disaster, and posted a career-changing century that stunned his opponents and doubters alike.

It was an almost identical situation to the one he encountered in today's opening match against New Zealand at Wellington, where the visitors were 4-89 and the Black Caps bowlers on a roll.

However, that was scarcely uncharted territory for the all-rounder who is enjoying the most fruitful phase of an at-times frustrating cricket journey.

Since the Headingley Test last July, in his role as permanent number six, Marsh has only seen Australia's first four wickets put on a score above 220 on one occasion.

That came on day one of the current international summer, in the Test against Pakistan when the team was 4-304 and he blazed 90 from 107 balls to lift their total to 487, paving the way for a 360-run win in a player-of-the-match performance.

But more often than not of late, the 32-year-old has been cast in the role of counter-puncher which is precisely what he was able to do at Basin Reserve in partnership with fellow Western Australian all-rounder Cameron Green, who would go on to reach his second Test century in the day's final over.

"I was struggling down my end, and I know how Mitch plays having played quite a bit with him for WA," Green said today after the pair added 67 for the fifth wicket, of which Marsh scored 40 from 39 balls against the run of play.

"He always loves to score and that was exactly what we needed at the time.

"Just to put some pressure back on them when it was tough out there, and somebody who's looking to score is really dangerous.

"I thought his innings was really crucial for us today, just to put them on the back foot and try take a bit of shine off the ball.

"I thought he batted beautifully."

New Zealand holds a special place in Border's storied career, given it was at Christchurch's former rugby stronghold Lancaster Park in 1993 where he overtook India's Sunil Gavaskar's benchmark of 10,122 Test runs to become the game's highest scorer at that time.

Not surprisingly, Border climbed that pinnacle amid a tumble of top-order wickets with Australia in the first innings of that Test 31 years ago, surrendering four for the addition of 115 runs before he  found a staunch lower-order ally in wicketkeeper Ian Healy.

But while the reigning Allan Border Medallist and the man who inspired the prize might share an increasing number of similar game scenarios at this stage of Marsh's career, they remain poles apart in the way they approach their work as salvage merchants.

Border's curmudgeonly combativeness was in line with both circumstances – so many early career experiences where Australia were routinely pummelled, most often by the unrelenting West Indies – and character, with the fearless left-hander unflinchingly grinding away at every backs-to-the-wall challenge.

Contrastingly, and true to his extrovert nature, Marsh arrives at the wicket when crisis looms rather like a sea breeze on a stifling afternoon.

Not only does he regularly swing momentum back in his team's favour as readily as he wields his hefty bat, he can ease pressure on a batting partner who is finding the going tough at the other end as was the case with Green this afternoon.

It's a situation that Green himself has experienced more than a few times in his still-young Test career.

After all, he was the guy charged with mounting those rescue roles at number six before making way for Marsh at Headingley, and then being reinvented as a number four in the shake-up that followed opener David Warner's retirement.

While Green found the job specification in that sometimes strange swing role – which can demand either adding the flourish to a solid foundation, or saving the entire structure from crumbling – dauntingly tough, he sees in Marsh someone inherently made for the job.

And that, in turn, ensures Australia's Test team can find a balance that Border could only have dreamed of throughout a 156-match tenure that returned a winning percentage of just 32 per cent, the lowest of any player to don the Baggy Green Cap more than 70 times.

"It's where I like batting for WA, it suits my game and I found it tough batting after Heady (Australia's incumbent number five, Travis Head) for a few years," Green said today of his new position at number four.

"He just made scoring look a bit too easy, and I'd take a bit of time to get in.

"So someone like Mitch Marsh is actually beautiful for that position.

"How he goes about is just as aggressive if not more aggressive than Heady, so number four suits me.

"But it's just whether or not that suits the team."

Qantas Tour of New Zealand

Watch all the action from the NZvAUS Tour live and exclusive on Foxtel and Kayo Sports. Click Here to subscribe

February 29 – March 4: First Test, Wellington, 9am AEDT

March 8-12: Second Test, Christchurch, 9am AEDT

Australia Test squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Michael Neser, Matthew Renshaw, Steve Smith (vc), Mitchell Starc

New Zealand Test squad: Tim Southee (c), Tom Blundell (wk), Devon Conway, Matt Henry, Scott Kuggeleijn, Tom Latham, Daryl Mitchell, Will O'Rourke, Glenn Phillips, Rachin Ravindra, Mitchell Santner, Neil Wagner, Kane Williamson, Will Young.