With some of its biggest stars kicking their feet up back home, Australia headed across the Tasman last month with a chance to find answers to questions that may have otherwise gone unasked.
In truth, it was a blessing in disguise.
To pick and stick with a winning team is the ultimate goal, but cricket doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Plans can, and often are, ripped up for a fresh start.
Watch Live Coverage of The 2020/21 Marsh Sheffield Shield on Kayo. New to Kayo? Try 14-Days Free Now >
READ MORE
Aussies’ flaky batting and strange tactics exposed as Kiwis deny fairy tale comeback
The ONE discovery Australia’s selectors found during Kiwi tour
Only two eights and SIX fails as big guns go missing: Player ratings
To produce more sustainable success, fringe players need reps at an international level, new cricketers need to be coming through while the established stars may need to grow comfortable with secondary roles, should they ever be required.
Australia’s tour of New Zealand provided a chance to satisfy all of the above.
Stand-in coach Andrew McDonald suggested before the series that Australia may experiment, with middle-order combinations, bowling formations and new personnel all on the agenda.
In the end, Australia used just 12 players in five matches and made only minor tweaks to its line-up as it went hunting for a comeback 3-2 series win, which it didn’t achieve.
Now Australia leaves New Zealand knowing very little about its side that it didn’t already know.
Arguably the biggest wasted opportunity was for Australia to settle on its best middle-order, which lingers as the final piece to the puzzle when everyone is available.
Selectors already know that Australia’s top-order will be locked out by Aaron Finch, David Warner, Steve Smith and Glenn Maxwell.
What they don’t know is where Matthew Wade fits in — if at all — moving forward, who its best finisher is and whether Marcus Stoinis will ever be as good at No.5 as he is as an opener.
Get all the latest cricket news, highlights and analysis delivered straight to your inbox with Fox Sports Sportmail. Sign up now!!!
‘He’s onto the roof!’
0:31
These were all things Australia could have taken steps to determine. In a five match series, there was ample opportunity.
Wade could have been deployed in the middle-order for at least a game. So too could have Josh Philippe, who is being talked about as a possible replacement for Wade, albeit in the middle-order.
That was an option McDonald spoke about before the series, only to then play Philippe inside the top three in all five matches.
“I think it’s really as simple as working out who the locks are for the World Cup and then fitting the other players potentially in and around that,” he said before the series, according to ESPNCricinfo.
“But also exposing them to positions that they may not have been exposed to before in a sense that, for example, Josh Philippe, if Warner and Finch are opening in the World Cup then does that look like him batting somewhere else in the order.
“We’ll need to find that out, there’s no doubt about that.”
Australia certainly didn’t find that out in New Zealand.
Meanwhile, selectors may have taken another look at Ashton Turner. Remember when he smoked 84 runs off 43 balls to chase down 358 in India? It’s hard to image he wasn’t worth a look-in in New Zealand for a game.
Even McDonald himself suggested Turner would be given a shot, saying before the series: “He’s no doubt someone who has been earmarked for awhile as a very composed, smart finisher and we saw that play out in Mohali a few years ago and he’s starting to return to that similar form.”
Meredith makes Kiwi captain his bunny
0:47
Also unused was Ben McDermott who made 402 runs at 36.54 last BBL season with a strike rate of 139.58. He hasn’t played a T20I since November 2019.
D’Arcy Short averages 30.57 in T20Is but also wasn’t given a single innings.
Meanwhile, Mitch Marsh played out the entire series and averaged just 16.75, while Maxwell and Wade only had one innings of note each.
Jason Behrendorff, AJ Tye and Tanveer Sangha were also unused in the series.
Australia does deserve credit for blooding two players this series in Philippe and Riley Meredith.
Furthermore, Daniel Sams played the first two matches as one of four all-rounders in the team alongside Maxwell, Stoinis and Marsh, before selectors switched to three quicks and two spinners.
But Sams’ axing for Meredith was the biggest experiment Australia undertook all series and, even then, neither likely plays in the nation’s best XI when everyone is available.
Australia also promoted Asthon Agar to No.6, but only as part of a plan to maintain left-hand-right-hand combinations against Ish Sodhi and Mitch Santner, and not as a genuine long-term option.
Australia arrives back home on Sunday night still without knowledge of its best middle-order, or what it will do with certain players at the World Cup.
All it learnt is that when its biggest stars are unavailable, it can’t quite get the job done on the road.
It hardly needed to go to New Zealand to work that out.