Pace brilliance papering over Aussie batting cracks

"I actually said to the boys in the room, 'We're playing on some tricky wickets at the moment, and this was an innings where we all missed out together. Normally we have one or two batters that step up and change the momentum, or get through a period and help us get a total on the board. It just happened to be a day where we all missed out'."

So said Steve Smith. Only, he wasn't speaking after a chaotic Boxing Day at the MCG during which his team was skittled for 152, but 13 months ago, following Australia's total of 104 all out in last summer's Border-Gavaskar Trophy series opener in Perth.

It would have been easy to pontificate on the state of English cricket on a day that saw them debut a No.3 who is yet to make a first-class hundred amid being bowled out for 110.

Yet as the Melbourne faithful dined out another spell of ruthless pace bowling from their beloved Scott Boland on day one of this fourth Ashes Test in Melbourne, the quiet concern around Australia's batting frailties persisted.

A three-nil Ashes scoreline, headlined with the bat by a couple of dynamic hundreds from Travis Head, who has been best supported throughout the series by wicketkeeper Alex Carey, has allowed the hosts to enjoy another winning home summer.

But a spicy MCG pitch brought with it a harsh reminder that Australia's batting order remains an unsettled one, a point underlined by the fact that – through selection or circumstances – only newcomer Jake Weatherald has played all seven completed innings of this Ashes campaign in the same position. Weatherald will bat at No.3 tomorrow with Scott Boland opening the batting to face the single over of Australia's innings before stumps on day one.

And if hundreds are the currency by which batters are traditionally measured, this is a statistic worth considering: in 13-and-a-half home Tests since the beginning of the 2023-24 summer, Head's five centuries are more than the rest of the team has managed combined (Smith two, Carey one, David Warner one).

Through the same period – and following the same theme – only Head has averaged 40-plus.

"I've played a lot, I've experienced different conditions, I know the differences now from 10 years ago, in terms of the wickets and how difficult it can be at the moment," Smith told cricket.com.au last summer. "With these Kookaburra balls, with the grass that's on the wickets, you're not seeing those scores of 450, 500 in the first innings.

"I'd love to score more runs, but I think particularly for the top order, it has been a lot more challenging – those first 35 overs, I think, are as challenging as it's been in the game since I started playing, no doubt.

"I even looked at the seam numbers (in terms of degrees of movement off the pitch) from 10 years ago to now on average, and they've gone up dramatically. That was just to back up what I was thinking, and it sort of proved it right."

Smith is indeed correct. Numbers detailed on Seven's coverage today indicated that Australia has in recent times become home to the three venues in the world that offer the most seam movement for Test pacemen – Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane.

It has allowed Australia's outstanding pace attack to generally dominate, and visiting bowlers who pitch the ball full enough – Jasprit Bumrah, Aamer Jamal, Shamar Joseph and today, Josh Tongue – to have an impact.

Today however, Tongue was not Bumrah. Through his first six overs, the right-armer's pitch map was inconsistent, yet there were enough balls in the right place – full, on or around off stump – to account for Marnus Labuschagne and Smith, who both appeared to go hard at the ball with indecisive footwork.

Smith's consecutive hundreds against India last summer go against his recent trend; outside of those knocks, he has managed 539 runs at 31.71 in 13 Tests at home since the beginning of 2023-24 – almost half his career mark of 58.93.

Labuschagne's decline through the same window has been more dramatic. In his past 14 home Tests, he is averaging 27.13 with a highest score of 72. This against a career home average of 53.

And so it goes for Usman Khawaja and Cameron Green, while the likes of Mitchell Marsh, Nathan McSweeney, Sam Konstas and Josh Inglis have all been either discarded for good or are temporarily on the outer. Beyond Head's heroics, only Carey has been a success story for Australia with the bat.

The case of Green is particularly interesting. Picked as a prodigy and evidently too good for the Sheffield Shield, his batting has stymied this summer after some promising signs in the Caribbean in July led captain Pat Cummins to call the allrounder "a long-term option" at number three.

With the recall of Labuschagne, Green hasn't batted there since, moving instead from six to five without making a score of note. Today, his demotion to number seven indicated Australia's brain trust might in fact be viewing the 26-year-old not as the batting wunderkind once promised to be, but more as a genuine allrounder, capable of making handy scores when it matters, and chipping in with important wickets.

With Khawaja likely to exit stage left, Smith turning 37 and their all-time attack showing signs that the end is nigh, it will be fascinating to watch how Australia's batting group evolves across the team's stretch of 21 Tests in 12 months from the middle of next year.

Recently, Head's transition to opener has been a lone major win among the tinkering. And while immediately after today's play, the nature of the MCG pitch drew criticism from the likes of Ricky Ponting and Stuart Broad, in some ways it simply served to reinforce a couple of broader points: batting in Australia is challenging at the moment, and as they move into a new era, the home side must find the best way to handle it.

2025-26 NRMA Insurance Men's Ashes

First Test: Australia won by eight wickets

Second Test: Australia won by eight wickets

Third Test: Australia won by 82 runs

Fourth Test: December 26-30: MCG, Melbourne, 10:30am AEDT

Fifth Test: January 4-8: SCG, Sydney, 10:30am AEDT

Australia squad (fourth Test only): Steve Smith (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Brendan Doggett, Cameron Green, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Todd Murphy, Michael Neser, Jhye Richardson, Mitchell Starc, Jake Weatherald, Beau Webster

England squad: Ben Stokes (c), Harry Brook (vc), Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Shoaib Bashir, Jacob Bethell, Brydon Carse, Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Matthew Fisher, Will Jacks, Ollie Pope, Matthew Potts, Joe Root, Jamie Smith (wk), Josh Tongue