Bulls depth has Renshaw set for middle-order switch

Former Test opener Matthew Renshaw is prepared to bat as low as No.5 in the order for Queensland this season as he looks to re-start his push for a Test recall.

Renshaw, who was part of Australia’s Test squad at the start of last year, was dropped from the Queensland side last season when Test stars Marnus Labuschagne and Joe Burns returned to the Marsh Sheffield Shield.

And with the Test duo, skipper Usman Khawaja and impressive young opener Bryce Street all expected to be available at the start of the domestic season, Renshaw is prepared to move away from his familiar opening spot in order to get back into the side.

"If I bat at five, I bat at five," he told cricket.com.au.

"Obviously the coach has some important decisions to make about team make-up and if I do miss out, I'm just going to go back to club cricket and score runs and put pressure on them.

"If I put a bit of pressure on, I know I've got the ability to succeed.

"I always think that anyone who can open the batting can bat anywhere in the order. You're dealing with the toughest scenarios.

"I've been batting in the middle order in one-day cricket and T20 cricket, so I've got a little more experience in the middle order than a couple of years ago.

"I feel confident going anywhere. I just want to be back in that Shield team and playing as much cricket as I can."

Renshaw's future is one of several intriguing subplots surrounding Queensland's star-studded top order this season, with Khawaja also looking for a Test recall after he lost his Cricket Australia contract earlier this year.

With David Warner, Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith entrenched in Australia's top four, the clearest path back to Test cricket for both Khawaja and Renshaw would seemingly be in place of Burns, Warner's current opening partner and their Queensland teammate.

And then there's 22-year-old opener Street, who burst into the senior side last summer thanks to a record-breaking score of 345 in second XI cricket before he scored two Shield centuries in his debut season.

Renshaw has enjoyed good recent success in the middle order in the white-ball game at the same time as his red-ball numbers have fallen away. Since he enjoyed a highly successful stint with English county side Somerset two years ago, he's averaged 21 from 35 first-class matches with two half-centuries.

Following his axing from the Shield side in February, he also took a short break from the game, citing mental exhaustion after a breakout KFC BBL campaign for the Brisbane Heat.

It's been a significant fall for the left-hander, who burst onto the international stage in the 2016-17 season at the age of 20, scoring a century against Pakistan at the SCG and becoming the only Australian to score 500 Test runs before his 21st birthday.

"At times I feel like I'm a way better cricketer than I was when I was in the Test team," he says.

"Obviously there's other things that go into that in terms of your headspace and … other teams can work you out a bit better. But I feel like I'm a better player than I was three or four years ago, which can be a good thing, but it can be a bad thing as well.

"Obviously when you've scored a Test hundred, you're doing something right. Going back in the last six months working on improving my game, you look at what I was doing then. I obviously batted for a long period of time, which was massive.

"You know that you can do it at that level, and if anything, that makes it a little more frustrating when you nick off early. You think, 'Why can't I do it now?'."

Image Id: 424CAD06A1C244C1862073F205B0EBE2