{"id":282251,"date":"2025-11-25T10:06:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T10:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/282251\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T10:06:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T10:06:13","slug":"the-ashes-2025-australia-open-to-flexible-batting-order-after-head-heroics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/282251\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ashes 2025: Australia open to flexible batting order after Head heroics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia head coach Andrew McDonald will consider reshuffling his batting order again in the future following Travis Head’s match-winning century in the first Test <\/a>in Perth.<\/p>\n

With regular opener Usman Khawaja struggling with back spasms and the hosts tasked with chasing 205 on a difficult pitch, Head was promoted to the top of the order for the second innings. He blasted 123 off 83 balls as Australia won by eight wickets inside two days.<\/p>\n

They were also forced to experiment with their batting line-up in the first innings, with Marnus Labuschagne stepping in to open alongside debutant Jake Weatherald as Khawaja had spent too much time off the field during England’s innings.<\/p>\n

Australia headed into the Ashes with question marks surrounding their batting, particularly their struggle to find a settled opening pair since David Warner’s retirement in January 2024, but following Head’s heroics, McDonald says he isn’t averse to borrowing from limited-overs cricket and adopting a flexible batting order depending on the match situation and conditions.<\/p>\n

“We’ve hypothesised around a middle order going up to the top order in the second innings if [the pitch] happened to flatten out, particularly if we need quick runs and the wicket was going to deteriorate,” McDonald said.<\/p>\n

“You do it in one-day cricket. You front-end some of your innings when you know the back-end will be difficult to chase down the runs.<\/p>\n

“Then there’s other times in one-day cricket where it’s difficult up front and you back-end your innings, and you put all your power at the back-end.<\/p>\n

“Can that transition into Test cricket? Are people ready for that? It’s a conversation that we have had.<\/p>\n

“We’ve had a conversation around Travis opening the batting for a long period of time \u2026 now that it’s out there, happy to talk about it. Will we do it if it presents at the right time? Potentially.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia head coach Andrew McDonald will consider reshuffling his batting order again in the future following Travis Head’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-282251","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}