{"id":919343,"date":"2026-10-07T11:36:26","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T11:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/919343\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T11:36:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T11:36:26","slug":"australia-cricket-feud-travis-head-defends-nic-maddinson-selection-and-slams-unfair-commentary-from-past-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/919343\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia cricket feud: Travis Head defends Nic Maddinson selection and slams \u2018unfair\u2019 commentary from past players"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Daniel<\/p>\n

October 7, 2026 \u2014 7:42pm<\/p>\n

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Durban: A simmering feud between Australia\u2019s current and past Test cricketers has been reignited by Travis Head, in a pointed riposte to criticism of the touring side\u2019s recent batting displays and the surprise selection of Nic Maddinson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Speaking ahead of Australia\u2019s main training session to an audience that included former Test opener and ABC commentator Phil Jaques, Head made plain his displeasure at the way the team had been targeted by past generations.<\/p>\n

\"TravisTravis Head has fired back at criticism of the Test team.Getty Images<\/p>\n

Most recently this was epitomised by how Matthew Hayden had attacked the selectors for picking 34-year-old Maddinson seemingly from nowhere<\/a> to be in contention to play at Kingsmead this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s unfairly judged a fair bit from a group of past players, pretty much that put the bullet through a lot of players, which I think is unfair,\u201d Head said. \u201cBut that\u2019s what they\u2019re paid to do. Some of them need a job, so they go after us, and that\u2019s totally fine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis group is strong enough to deal with those sorts of things. That\u2019s how it is. It\u2019s unfortunate sometimes to have some of that feedback from a generation of players that we have huge respect for, but that\u2019s the caper.\u201d<\/p>\n

The generational divide between current practitioners and their forebears moving into commentary has long been a part of professional sport, but the Australian team has worn more barbs than most since Justin Langer resigned as head coach in 2022<\/a> after mounting discontent from the team about his volatility.<\/p>\n

\"MatthewMatthew Hayden was critical of the Test squad call-up for Nic Maddinson.Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re a very proud bunch of guys who we went through a bit of a sticky situation with a few years ago, where they stood up and were pretty proud about one of their own,\u201d Head said of that episode. \u201cBut in saying that, we\u2019re playing for the same cause. We have huge respect for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hayden\u2019s latest blast arrived last week when Maddinson was called up.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere we are at is that we are promoting the greatest pile of mediocrity that we\u2019ve seen in a generation of cricket,\u201d Hayden said on the All Over Bar The Cricket podcast. \u201cAnd if we continue to lay that out and expect that a bloke averaging 35 is going to average 55 in Test match cricket, George Bailey and Tony Dodemaide, you are dreaming.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will just put it that simply. You are frigging dreaming. And you are piling up this dog shit explanation, and you are, in my opinion, disrespecting first-class cricket. Absolutely dead set you are. You should be picking guys that are averaging 45 or more, and you can\u2019t, because they don\u2019t want to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Head<\/a> argued that prevailing pitch conditions at domestic and international levels made the simple comparison of batting averages difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you go through Sheffield Shield numbers 20 years ago, they look a lot different,\u201d he said. \u201cDarren Lehman averaged 57, I think, for South Australia, scored 20,000-odd runs. Who\u2019s doing that in Shield cricket these days? Like, who\u2019s peeling out 1200 runs, 1400 runs? I don\u2019t think it\u2019s down to lack of skill.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike, [Lehmann] is the exception because I think he\u2019s probably the best Sheffield Shield player to ever play the game. It\u2019s probably a poor example, but there\u2019s guys that aren\u2019t putting out the same numbers, and it\u2019s pretty obvious to see what the wickets were like back then to now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Head also noted recent discussion about him moving down the batting order to No.5 after a trio of low scores in the August series against Bangladesh<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have laughed at a fair bit of it because if a traditional opening batter had pushed out the same sort of numbers in his first 20 innings, I think he\u2019d be pretty safe and not talked about in the way that it has been talked about,\u201d Head said. \u201cBut I think that\u2019s a bit of the media these days: it\u2019s not so much a good day, bad day, it\u2019s a lot of headline stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cHad a great summer, missed out first day in Darwin, and I\u2019m no good at it again. So that doesn\u2019t bother me the slightest. If people want to read it and are happy and not having a dig, but people are going to click on it if it\u2019s drawing the line through someone.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Travis<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve played long enough to know that that happens. More of that will happen Friday if I open the batting and miss out. The same question marks. Vice versa, if I play well, they\u2019ll probably still think I should go to five. But that\u2019s up to you guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

Head also appraised Maddinson\u2019s abilities, and the benefits of choosing mature players for Test cricket.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need mature guys that know what they need to be doing,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think that revolves back to why we\u2019ve been so good over a period of time, and why Australian cricket was so good back then in that era. Because you bring in the Mike Husseys of the world who are 30, who have tried and tested and know what they need to do, and mature and know the blueprint and know what they need.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether that\u2019s going to result in runs, the game is so hard. But if you know you can have the same person rock up day in day out with the same attitude, more often than not you get good results, and that\u2019s what makes a good team.\u201d<\/p>\n

News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport are sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"DanielDaniel Brettig<\/a> is The Age’s chief cricket writer and the author of several books on cricket.Connect via X<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"October 7, 2026 \u2014 7:42pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":919344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-919343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/919344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}