Amid a Sydney Test that threw up no end of talking points, there were a couple that sat on opposite ends of the selection spectrum.
With both countries now set for an extended break from Test cricket, the red-ball conversations will turn to the potential comings and goings of personnel; those futures assured and those that appear somewhat murky.
And across five days at the SCG, the performances of England’s Jacob Bethell and Australia’s Beau Webster presented a couple of arguments for the perceived best way to pick players.
A full decade and potentially an entire youth selection policy separates 22-year-old Bethell from 32-year-old Webster. One was recalled in this series without a first-class hundred to his name, the other had 13 of them and almost 200 wickets.
From an Australian perspective, a Bethell-style selection might have been something from the playbook of Greg Chappell, who, when in selection and high-performance roles with Cricket Australia – and even long before – was a noted proponent for youth, with his logic essentially being that players will improve when they are exposed to better bowling or batting.
In the 2016-17 summer, Chappell and his fellow selectors picked 20-year-old Matthew Renshaw in the Test team and 21-year-old Sam Heazlett in the ODI team. Neither had a lot of domestic experience though both, unlike Bethell, had a couple of hundreds to their name.
Which isn’t to say the current national selection panel have shied away from picking young players. In the past 13 months we have seen 20-year-old Sam Konstas and 21-year-old Cooper Connolly given Baggy Greens.
Chappell might have been influenced by his own playing career – he scored a Test hundred on debut as a 22-year-old in 1970 – and the arguments for and against picking players young has raged on healthily in the 55 years since, without a definitive answer.
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What is certain however is that with Usman Khawaja’s retirement, there will be at least one spot up for grabs in Australia’s Test XI come the Top End winter series against Bangladesh. And probably more.
So which way do Australia go?
Webster’s performance in Sydney underscored the quality of the asset they had sitting on the sidelines for the majority of this Ashes series. Head coach Andrew McDonald has said he has no issue playing the allrounder in the same team as another allrounder, Cameron Green, and with Alex Carey’s batting form, perhaps that is the simple answer to Australia’s middle-order puzzle: the positions of five-six-seven falling to Green-Carey-Webster (pick your order within).
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Yet openers aside, Australia’s method of managing the arrival of a young batting talent into the Test setup has often been by starting them out at number six: from Marnus Labuschagne to Michael Clarke, back to Mark and Steve Waugh.
Which means if selectors want to inject some fresh blood and pull a youngster from the Sheffield Shield – say a Connolly, or even an Ollie Peake (who is yet to score a first-class hundred, but who was an extra on Australia’s Test tour to Sri Lanka last year) – then they will need to work out how to make room for him. Does that mean the place of Labuschagne, who has gone 40 Test innings without a hundred, comes under threat?
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And of course there remains uncertainty over Jake Weatherald’s position, which then returns us to the conversation of Australia’s opening pair – one that has been played out ad nauseam at the front-end of the past two summers. Is that where youth, in the form of Victoria’s Campbell Kellaway, will find its way into the side?
But then, how necessary is a youthful selection anyway? Recent history suggests not very. In the past decade, Test selectors have picked seven players aged 22 or under and so far, only one of them – Green – has enjoyed a 20-plus match career (though the rest of them, barring Will Pucovski, could yet change that).
In the same timeframe however, that percentage stays roughly true across the board. Selectors have debuted 30 Test cricketers since January 1, 2016, and only four of them – Green, Travis Head, Labuschagne, Alex Carey – have played 20 or more Tests (Scott Boland has played 19).
A hard judge might say selectors therefore only have around a 15 per cent hit rate (versus a historical mark of 32 per cent: 152 of Australia’s 473 Test cricketers have played 20-plus matches). Yet it is more complex than that; with so many mainstays in the side, there have been few places to permanently fill.
What it does underline is how difficult selection is. There is no proven formula. For every canny over-30 selection, every boom youngster picked, there are at least twice as many that don’t work out.
It’s also worth factoring in age to Australia’s selection dilemmas. Nathan Lyon is 38, Mitchell Starc will be 36 this month, Michael Neser turns 36 in March, Josh Hazlewood has just turned 35, and Boland and Steve Smith will both be 37 before Australia begin their run of 20-21 Tests in the space of a year. Turnover is on the horizon.
So is it Bethell or Webster? Which is the more bankable type of selection?
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Let’s look at it another way, and stretch the timeframe back to January 1, 2000.
Australian Test players have scored 354 centuries in that period. Only 49 of them – roughly one in seven – were scored by players aged 26 or under.
Through the same window, Australia’s Test players have taken 190 five-wicket hauls, of which 43 – a little better than one in five – have been from the 26-or-under group.
Those in the Bethell camp would say the young guns need to start somewhere. That if they’re good enough, they should play. And the ‘generational talents’ such as Ponting, Clarke, Smith, Starc, Pat Cummins and Hazlewood are illustrative of that point.
On the flipside, those in the Webster camp will point to his Test career numbers to date (bat ave 41, bowling ave 24) and then nominate names like Boland, Mike Hussey and Adam Voges as evidence that inserting older players who are readymade for Test cricket is actually the smart play for selectors.
When he was presented with his Player-of-the-Series award, Starc was quick to mention the queries that had existed around the respective ages of Australia’s pace trio (Starc, Boland, Neser), and the match-winning performances they nonetheless delivered.
It was a fair point to make. For while the questions will continue to be asked, and while the turnover is awaited, Australia’s ageing, Ashes-winning squad simply continues to do the business.
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: England won by four wickets
Fifth Test: January 4-8: SCG, Sydney, 10am AEDT
Australia squad (fifth Test): 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), 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