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Getting dropped three games after being forced to open the batting, out of position, against the most bowler-friendly Kookaburra ball ever made, facing arguably the greatest fast bowler cricket has ever seen, in full flight, at the absolute peak of his powers in conditions among the toughest Australia has ever produced. That too after you help set up, in some way, your team's only win of the most significant Border-Gavaskar Trophy in a decade in which there's a place in the WTC Final up for grabs.
Or
Stepping in to do the exact same aforementioned job, having all of 11 first-class games under your belt, at the age of 19, when you’ve just seen what’s happened to your predecessor who happened to have thrice the experience you do?
Honestly, not sure. That’s for either Nathan McSweeney or Sam Konstas to answer.
But all we know is that McSweeney is out of the team at the same speed he entered it, and his only fault is this: Jasprit Bumrah exists.
The raw numbers will probably tell you that McSweeney deserved to be axed: he averaged 14.40 and scored more than 10 just once in six attempts. He literally could not buy a run.
But here are also the things the numbers will tell you:
> He averaged 57 against bowlers not named Bumrah, getting dismissed once in 146 balls
> Across the first three Tests, he was the only opener apart from KL Rahul to face 45+ balls in an innings on two separate occasions
> He scored 9 more runs, faced 76 more balls and hit two more boundaries than his very senior opening partner Usman Khawaja
And yet he is out of the team because he averaged 3.8 against Bumrah, against whom his opening partner Khawaja averaged 4.3, and the 53-Test-old Marnus Labuschagne averaged 3.00.
Try telling McSweeney that this world is fair.
***
The truth is, Australia felt like they had to make a ‘tough’ decision; so they made the easiest of the tough decisions, axing the rookie who had fared no worse than the seniors around him.
In a way, you can understand why Australia made that call. Sure, McSweeney was eating up balls and setting it up for those below him, but they probably felt frustrated by his inability to kick on and make it count once he’d survived that initial tough period. Admittedly, the right-hander threw away two golden opportunities in Adelaide and Brisbane.
And so, with a seemingly generational talent waiting on the sidelines who, at least going by the eye test, seemed to have that ‘it’ factor, the Aussies caved into the temptation of swapping the borderline scapegoat for the shiny new toy.
The most unpleasant thing about this whole situation is the message it sends out.
Australia, with his whole McSweeney mess, have told a bunch of young players in the country that they won’t be objectively judged even if they are thrown to the wolves and asked to perform the toughest of tasks. And they’ve probably sent a very wrong message that public backing for a young player doesn’t mean anything.
From Pat Cummins to Steve Smith to others, everyone spent the last few days praising McSweeney and the other top three batters for their underrated role in blunting out the new ball.
“I think there's little snippets that have been important. Again, that first innings, Trav walks in 35 overs into the game, I think that makes a big difference, the same in Adelaide. Obviously they [the top three] would be hoping to score more runs, we'd like them to score more runs, but I think they have made some important contributions that others have benefited from,” Cummins said after the Gabba Test.
Meanwhile, Smith credited the top three after his ton for eating up close to 150 deliveries, thereby making it easier for the middle-order.
You’d think McSweeney would have taken these words as a vote of confidence, but what’s the message you’re sending to him by axing him now?
What probably makes the blow even more devastating for McSweeney is probably that this axing is coming on the back of a declaration slog, where clearly he and the other batters were instructed to ‘go for it’. In the second innings in Brisbane, the 25-year-old perished chasing an eighth stump delivery off Akash Deep - something he would never do under normal circumstances.
There, in McSweeney’s mind, he was merely following the team’s instructions. He probably got some sort of assurance - from his skipper, at the very least, that he would not be punished where he would fail attempting a slog.
Three days later, he is out of the team. It would probably feel like a betrayal for the youngster.
This whole mess reflects badly on the Australian selectors and management because it’s shoddy planning. Today after the squad was out, Bailey said that they left out McSweeney because they felt the top three ‘felt similar’ in terms of their profile and tempo.
"You can say the way our top three have been playing has been reasonably similar and we'd like the ability to throw something different at India on the back of that," Bailey said.
But Bailey and Australia knew this before the Perth Test - that McSweeney, Khawaja and Labuschagne all are very similar players. You can throw Smith into the mix too.
So, in that case, why was McSweeney picked in the first place? The selectors could easily have begun the series with Konstas or picked a more aggressive player - maybe a wildcard like Inglis - and asked him to take the attack to India.
Given the success of this Australian side under Cummins, Andrew McDonald and chief selector George Bailey, which has been built on trust, with the team thriving by shutting out the outside noise, with incumbents and out-of-form players being backed to the hilt, this McSweeney axing feels pretty out of character.
It’s a move which is probably the clearest indication yet that the Aussies are seriously feeling the heat, and genuinely believe that they need to do *something* in order to get past this relentless Indian unit.
Is Sam Konstas the answer to that? Only time will tell.
But one can only hope that they handle the Konstas situation better than the McSweeney one. Considering what this 19-year-old is going to be up against, he should not be written off or scapegoated even if he endures four failures.
