Australian captain Pat Cummins revealed that he had no formal discussions with selectors regarding who Australia’s next opener should be in the longer format of the game. The left-handed opener’s Test career will end this week against Pakistan at his home ground SCG, with him finishing as Australia’s fifth-highest run-scorer in red-ball cricket.
It will be difficult to replace David Warner at the top of the order, with Cameron Bancroft, Matt Renshaw, and Marcus Harris mentioned as potential replacements, while there have also been suggestions for Marnus Labuschagne or Travis Head to go up the order, allowing Cameron Green to return to the playing 11.
Speaking to the media, Pat Cummins said that he had no formal conversation with the Australian selectors about the next opener and that team management will sit down and finalize the openers before the test series against the West Indies, adding that they have three to four players to step into the side.
“(There’s been) nothing formal, and that’s the honest truth, I’ve had a couple of informal chats with Ronnie (coach Andrew McDonald) and we’ve always kind of said let’s get through this. We’ve got a bit of a gap until the next one, so I’m sure the selectors will sit down after this one and map it out”.
“The good thing is that we’re not short of options. There are probably three or four guys that could step in and we’d think would do a great job, but honestly, we haven’t had a chat about it too deeply yet,” Pat Cummins said.
Australia has had a consistent team throughout the Test summer, and this will be the third consecutive match at the SCG to celebrate David Warner’s farewell from the format. The selectors are seeking a successor for the left-handed opener for the West Indies series in January, with Cameron Green remaining a viable option if the batting order is overhauled alongside other primary openers.
I Think David Warner’s Our Greatest Three-format Player – Pat Cummins
Pat Cummins heaped praise on David Warner for his contribution to the team’s success in all three formats of the game, playing a crucial part for the team in ICC competitions, with his most recent excellent performance coming in the ODI World Cup 2023, and hailed him as one of the greatest three format players.
“Three formats over a decade. Two 50-over World cups, one T20 World Cup, and all those campaigns he was front and centre, he was a big reason for it. Then playing over a hundred Test matches puts him in an elite category in basically all three formats.
“Just his consistency and the bulk of work that he’s been able to achieve, I think he’s our greatest three-format player. It’s going to be a bit of an adjustment (with him gone) especially a big personality like Davey. Even off the field as much as on the field,” Pat Cummins added.
In all three formats combined, David Warner has scored 18,521 runs in 461 innings with an average of 42.47 and a strike rate of 85.94. Only Ponting has more runs than the left-hander for Australia, who would like to end his test career on a positive note at the SCG.