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Marsh returns to his happy place

Sri Lanka has been a happy hunting ground for Shaun Marsh and nothing changed during Australia's first competitive hit-out

Shaun Marsh has many a reason to feel comfortable in Sri Lanka.

Despite being a callow 16-year-old at the 2000 Under-19 World Cup played in the island nation, he finished the tournament as Australia’s second-highest runs scorer behind Shane Watson in a team that also included Michael Clarke, Ed Cowan and Mitchell Johnson.

Just over a decade later he returned to Sri Lanka and seemed destined to finally fulfil that boundless junior promise when he was named for his maiden Test at the southern sea port of Galle and immediately wrote himself into history.

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As the 19th Australia player to score a century in his debut Test.

Image Id: ~/media/A161C5DAA1C642758D886F9B32240616 Image Caption: Smith XI v Voges XI: Day One scorecard

Last week, he arrived back in Sri Lanka where his father Geoff coached (briefly) soon after that historic moment having added just 16 more Test appearances in the intervening five years, but with a vastly changed view of the world.

Not only made wiser by the vicissitudes that have characterised his disparate journey as an international cricketer, but also as a new dad after he and wife Rebecca welcomed their son Austin into the world last month.

If today’s outing in an admittedly informal all-Australian practice match at P Sara Stadium in Colombo can provide a meaningful gauge, then parenthood has brought only benefit to Marsh’s well-honed game.

Opening the batting in the absence of David Warner (who remains affected by the fractured left index finger he sustained during the recent ODI tri-series in the West Indies), Marsh completed a solid, patient century in taxing humidity.

Against an opposing attack that featured the not-always-friendly firepower of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon and Moises Henriques as well as a handful of eager young bucks.

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On a pitch that sported a tinge of green that – while scarcely Nottingham circa 2015 where Marsh (fleetingly) made one of his Test returns last year in Australia’s haunting loss – offered more encouragement to the quicks than the standard subcontinent deck.

So much so that Marsh’s fellow opener in this two-day trial game, Queensland’s Test incumbent Joe Burns, likened it to pitches he had experienced at the Gabba after netting on it earlier in the week.

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Burns might have been the only specialist Test batsman to lose his wicket across 90 overs today – caught behind for nine when trying to squeeze a wide, yorker-length delivery from Starc through point – but his place in the starting XI for the first Test starting at Kandy on July 26 is not in doubt.

Not for issues of form, that is, given that Burns posted a career-high 170 and was named man of the match in Australia’s most recent Test outing against New Zealand in Christchurch last February.

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But injury vacancies do not conform to such linear patterns, and if someone in the current top six succumbs over the coming dozen days or if Warner fails to make his projected timeline to full fitness then Marsh is clearly ready to fill the breach.

As he did so completely when Usman Khawaja tore a hamstring at Perth in the previous Australia summer and Marsh was drafted for a two-Test interim stint during which he clubbed a career-best 182 in his final outing against the West Indies in Hobart.

And piled on a record 449-run stand for the fourth wicket with Adam Voges, the ‘opposing’ captain in the first half of this practice fixture who clearly gleaned no clues during that innings, nor during their many matches together for Western Australia, as to how to dismiss his left-handed teammate.

Marsh can make an even stronger case for a Test recall in next week’s marginally more formal three-day tour match against an as-yet-unnamed Sri Lanka Cricket Board XI at the same venue in Colombo’s inner-east.

Where Warner will once again be sidelined having only returned to ‘shadow’ batting in the nets yesterday and filling various roles as 12th man, umpire and beyond-the-rope outfielder during today’s 89 overs in which Smith’s XI posted 4/389.

The vice-captain’s absence is likely to be the only anomaly between the team that takes to the lush P Sara field for that game and the XI for the first of the three Tests against a largely unheralded and equally under-rated Sri Lanka.

While the home team’s coach, South African-born Graham Ford, has publicly bemoaned the depth of Sri Lanka’s fast bowling stocks that were pared to the bone by injury during their recent, winless tour to the UK, Australia have cause to smile.

Their most potent paceman Mitchell Starc, who interim fast bowling coach Allan Donald rated this week as the world’s best, impressed in his first competitive red-ball hit-out since major ankle surgery last November.

Image Id: ~/media/D83045EF6E924D9C974CCD171730087C Image Caption: Mitchell Starc bowls during the instra-squad match in Colombo // Getty

After dismissing Burns, he welcomed his Test captain Steve Smith to the crease with a steepling bounced followed by an even more menacing short ball into the captain’s ribs.

Starc finished with three of the four wickets to fall to bowlers – Shaun Marsh and Smith both retired from the middle upon reaching their respective centuries – and rattled the stumps of National Performance Squad member Hilton Cartwright and fellow fast bowling cartel member Nathan Coulter-Nile.

He showed his stamina won’t be an issue in the enervating post-monsoonal heat despite his extended lay-off, sending a bouncer sailing over ‘keeper Peter Nevill’s head for four byes with the second new ball late in the day.

But even though the pitch offered good carry when the ball was hard and shiny and a few jumped off a length, it often yielded more ‘tennis ball’ bounce that meant those batsmen who got going – Smith, Marsh and his younger brother Mitchell (77no) – were able to cash in.

Helped by the fact that the pitch being prepared for the three-day game starting on Monday was roped off and out of bounds, thereby offering a ready-made 22-yard gap through the covers or mid-wicket.

Image Id: ~/media/322B94B0F1584F8C93D80012F340A334 Image Caption: Nathan Lyon bowling during the intra-squad match // Getty

Certainly there was slow turn but little else on offer for the spinners, with Lyon, highly-rated young wrist spinner Mitchell Swepson and his fellow leggie Arjun Nair all copping punishment when they dropped short and the ball sat up, asking to be hit.

It’s unlikely that will change drastically tomorrow when Steve O’Keefe will have the chance to push his claims for the role of second spinner in the upcoming Test series, bowling to the likes of Voges, Khawaja and Nevill in this faux fixture.