Dejected, Cameron Green departs the crease after his second-ball duck against Zimbabwe.Credit: Getty Images
Marsh suffered what was initially thought to be a fairly typical blow to the groin during a net session in Colombo during the days leading up to the first Cup game against Ireland. But when his discomfort lingered longer than the usual period in which teammates often struggle to hide their mirth, scans showed the consequences: evidence of testicular bleeding.
That was enough to get Steve Smith booked on a plane from Adelaide, where he took part in Wednesday’s LIV Golf pro-am at Grange, to join the team on standby in Colombo.
But irrespective of whether Marsh stays or goes, it is Green who should be best-placed to have a major impact on Australia’s hopes.
He has already been handed the prime No.3 spot in the batting order. It’s the same position from which Marsh made what is still among his most indelible contributions to Australian cricket, as the top order enforcer in a drought-breaking T20 World Cup campaign in the UAE in 2021.
An intriguing element of the Green story is how his steady development as a Test batter started to come undone in the aftermath of his first impactful T20 innings for Australia. Green made a pair of rapid and eye-catching half centuries against India in late 2022. Those innings put him in high demand for the 2023 Indian Premier League, and he was sold to Mumbai Indians for a whopping $4.2 million.
Green went on to India in early 2023 and performed well in the Test team, capped with his first Test hundred – in partnership with Usman Khawaja – in Ahmedabad. That innings helped take Green to a record of 941 runs at 37.64 from his first 20 Tests.
Another image of Green from the Rado campaign.
But where Cummins, Starc, Hazlewood and others had skipped the 2023 IPL due to the huge amount of international cricket on the table that year, Green stayed on and ended up spending about four months there.
In 17 Tests since, either side of back surgery that kept him out of the picture last summer, Green has cobbled 795 runs at 28.39 with one hundred (a sublime 174 in Wellington) and one 50. Within a team that has struggled recently with the bat, Green’s returns have been mediocre rather than disastrous, but they’re not comparable to Barty’s achievements in tennis.
The counterpoint to Green’s struggles in Tests is that he has spent more time honing his T20 game, putting him in better position to have a big impact at this tournament.
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That’s why Green is batting where he is, and why, at 26, he really needs to start to deliver in a senior role.
Intriguingly, Green sounded somewhat sheepish about his newfound commercial cache when speaking to Esquire, terming himself “a bit of an up-and-coming cricketer”. He said similar things during the Ashes when numerous starts were squandered.
Whatever Green may think about being a youngster, he has now spent more than five years in international cricket. It’s time he started imposing himself. Otherwise those Rado ads will only keep looking sillier.
