All signs point towards Australia calling upon twin spin in the third and final Test against West Indies at the SCG, a scenario the captain Steven Smith was more than open to as he assessed his side’s 177-run victory in Melbourne
Daniel Brettig29-Dec-2015A sore Peter Siddle, a tiring Josh Hazlewood, an emergent Mitchell Marsh, a dominant Nathan Lyon and a tour of Sri Lanka next year. All signs point towards Australia calling upon twin spin in the third and final Test against West Indies at the SCG, a scenario the captain Steven Smith was more than open to as he assessed his side’s 177-run victory in Melbourne.Siddle bowled only nine overs on the final day of the Boxing Day Test, his pace and penetration slackening as a result of a foot problem that compelled Smith to lean heavily upon the muscular fast medium of Marsh. Hazlewood, too, showed signs of flagging, and given Man-of-the-Match Lyon’s manifest success against the Caribbean batsmen, Australia’s selectors need only see a typical Sydney pitch to include Steve O’Keefe on his home ground.Depending on the fitness of Siddle and Hazlewood, the Victorian Scott Boland may be in line for a Test debut also, though for the time being it was the prospect of twin spin that enthused Smith, particularly when he looked ahead to the overseas assignments that beckon in Sri Lanka in 2016 and India the following year. He agreed that Marsh’s performance made him a viable option as a third seamer.”It’s possible,” Smith said. “We go to Sri Lanka later in the year, where there is a good chance we’ll see two spinners playing, or in the touring party. It’d be good to see a second spinner play and see what he has got to offer. We’ll wait and see what the pitch looks like and if the conditions are going to suit. If they do, there’s a pretty good chance we could see a second spinner playing.”I think when [Marsh] is in a good rhythm he’s as good as any of the bowlers around the country at the moment, and he hit that rhythm today. At the start of today his job was to bowl cross-seam and bash the wicket hard and try to get the ball scuffed up as much as possible to go reverse, and he did that job really well and got the rewards late in the day for the hard work he did early on.”Australia’s tired bowlers had themselves to blame for the match very nearly stretching into a fifth day, as the trio of wickets stolen away by no-balls left the coach Darren Lehmann making his unhappiness known to James Pattinson (twice on day three) and Hazlewood (once on day four) for their overstepping.”The bowlers don’t mean to overstep the mark,” Smith said. “It has been an issue for us this game because we had to take 23 wickets on a wicket that was quite hard to take wickets on. For us it was just about letting it go, continuing on and just having the energy that we had before that wicket, and I thought our energy, intent and all that in the field was probably as good as it has been this summer, and to be able to get that back was good.”We probably let ourselves down a little bit with the couple of no-balls taking the extra three wickets, probably takes a bit of time out of the game. I was glad the way we finished off though, taking that wicket just before the new ball was crucial for us, Lyono did what he has done for us all summer – he has got wickets at crucial times and he has bowled beautifully. Once we got the new ball, I was pretty confident we’d get the wickets.”A Jason Holder lbw referral to the DRS was unable to take its course when the ball-tracking technology was unavailable for the task, something that Smith said the team would discuss with the match referee, Chris Broad. However Smith noted he had actually been fortunate in that instance not to lose his review due to technical issues.”I think, looking at it, I was pretty lucky to get my review back to be honest,” Smith said. “It was probably sliding a fair way down leg, so it was a nice time to stop working if it’s going to stop working.”
