Having swashbuckled Australia to victory after vaulting to the top of the order in the first Ashes Test, Travis Head arrived in Brisbane on Sunday to begin his preparations for the second, saying that the future of the format lies in the hands of batters who can flex into a variety of positions. Head described pliable positions as \u201cwhere the game\u2019s going to\u201d, proposing that Australia could already \u201cuse these players in a range of different ways to win games of cricket\u201d.<\/p>\n
Last month Pat Cummins, Australia\u2019s injured captain, described the concept of batting orders as \u201cpretty overrated\u201d, insisting quality players \u201ccan bat wherever\u201d \u2013 an opinion Head echoed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you could use this order and these players in a range of different ways to win games of cricket,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen it in red-ball, and particularly pink-ball, as well as non-traditional stuff, with double nightwatchmen, and how you use orders and how you use players in certain situations. I agree with Pat that they\u2019re slightly overrated. That I guess is where the game\u2019s going to, and it\u2019s when do you use that, when\u2019s the right time, when\u2019s it acceptable, and we\u2019re going to have good moments of it and we\u2019re going to have bad moments of it. It\u2019s ever-evolving. We\u2019ll see where we get to.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I can play in any role, so I\u2019m open to it, and it\u2019s just trying to work out in game and in moments when that may come out and when you may use that, but I think all options are on the table and have been for a long period of time, about where this team can potentially get better and where there are opportunities to potentially win games of cricket in moments. I think it\u2019s always been on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n
Head reiterated his readiness to open the batting again in Brisbane this week and that he was \u201cpreparing for anything at this stage\u201d. One thing he is not doing, however, is worrying about the pink ball \u2013 \u201cIt\u2019s still a cricket ball\u201d \u2013 and the impact of playing much of the match under floodlights.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot talked about lights and when it does things and what it does and doesn\u2019t do,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019ve just got to play the game in front of you. Some wickets are greener, some flatten out, some crack, some spin. The game and the wicket evolves over five days, the ball sometimes plays differently in different moments.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Australia Sport<\/p>\n Get a daily roundup of the latest sports news, features and comment from our Australian sports desk<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cI guess half the skill of cricket is being able to adapt to moments and problem solve on the go. There\u2019s definitely those throughout pink-ball games, and the best team that\u2019s able to problem-solve on the go and generally just play the game of cricket and not overthink too much will find themselves having a pretty good week.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having swashbuckled Australia to victory after vaulting to the top of the order in the first Ashes Test,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-292834","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\/292834","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=292834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}