No.3 pays the price for prolonged run of poor form as selectors look ahead to home summer
Marnus Labuschagne has been dropped from the Test team for the second time in the space of 17 months, with selection chair George Bailey confirming the incumbent No.3 will not hold his place for Australia’s series opener against New Zealand from December 9 in Perth.
“At this stage we won’t be considering Marn for selection for certainly that first Test, but for the New Zealand series,” Bailey told media today. “There’s been a lot of speculation around his place in the team, and so I think this gives him a little bit of space and clears up a bit of conjecture as we work through the next round of Shield cricket.”
Labuschagne’s extended run of below-par form stretches back to the 2023 Ashes – the last series in which he scored a century – and since being dropped for Australia’s three-Test series against West Indies in the Caribbean last year, he has averaged 23.66 in 10 Tests, with two fifties from 19 innings.
The coup de grâce for the 32-year-old perhaps came in the final Test of last month’s series in South Africa, when he scored 0 and 4, having not reached 40 in the first two Tests.
It stretched his century-less run out to 49 innings; a quite stunning turnaround from his peak years between November 2019 and December 2022 when he hit 10 hundreds in 36 knocks.
During that run, Labuschagne was catapulted to the No.1 position on the ICC’s Test batting rankings, and Australia’s middle-order one-two punch of the Queenslander and Steve Smith was one of the most formidable in world cricket.
Since the middle of 2023 however, the regression has been similarly steep, evidenced by a batting average that has plummeted from 60.82 after 30 Tests to 42.64 after 68.
Bailey said there was a path back to the Test side for the right-hander, even as soon as next year’s Test series in India and England.
“It’s still possible, absolutely,” he said. “And I think we all know how good and how effective Marnus can be at his best. But that performance hasn’t been there. I think he’s missed some opportunities, some promising starts in Darwin and even in South Africa as well, to go on and get a big score that we’d like and would have liked for some time, and that just hasn’t happened. But I don’t think we’ve ever ruled anyone out permanently … and that’s no different in this case.”
With Labuschagne’s exit confirmed, the question will quickly turn to who replaces him. Smith’s return to the side will likely be the first piece of the puzzle after he missed the decider in Cape Town with a neck injury.
From there, Bailey said selectors would be picking the remainder of the Test squad to take on the Black Caps at the end of the next round of Sheffield Shield, which begins Wednesday.
“There’s a handful of players that are really well placed at the moment as we work through that over the next week or so to finalise how we think that squad in particular will structure up, and the options we’ll have within that,” he added.
“We just felt like this one was an important one, as much for Marn, just to give him the space. He’ll obviously go back and captain Queensland. (We) didn’t really think it was beneficial to have that conjecture hanging over his head for the next week or so.”
Australia v New Zealand Tests 2026-27
First Test: December 9-13, Perth Stadium, 1:20pm AEDT
Second Test: December 17-21, Adelaide Oval, 11:30am AEDT
Third Test: December 26-30, MCG, Melbourne, 10:30am AEDT
Fourth Test: January 4-8, SCG, Sydney, 10:30am AEDT