ADELAIDE, Nov 27: Australia could a surprise on Friday with Nathan Hauritz almost certain to play his first Test in four years if fellow off-spinner Jason Krejza fails to pass a fitness test before the start of the second Test against New Zealand here at the Adelaide Oval.
Krejza, who took 12 wickets on his Test debut against in Nagpur earlier this month, is struggling with an ankle injury, but Australia skipper Ricky Ponting is preparing for a bowling attack featuring Hauritz.
“Jason is still going to remain our No 1 choice of spinner with 12 wickets on debut and obviously I understand how shattered he is at the moment,” Ponting said on Thursday. “We’ll keep our fingers crossed and hope he comes up, but at the moment we think that it’s likely that Hauritz will play ahead of him.”
But in a match where New Zealand are considering two specialist spinners, Australia were adamant they needed at least one. After batsmen from both sides had trouble applying themselves on the green-tinged Gabba pitch last week, where Australia wrapped up a comfortable win, the bowlers know their task will be infinitely tougher on the flat Adelaide surface.
Aside from Jamie How’s 170 in the tour match in Sydney, the New Zealand top-order batting has struggled considerably. However, captain Daniel Vettori said they would not be aiming to belt their way back into form by focusing on Hauritz, even though he failed to pick up a wicket for New South Wales in the warm-up game.
“I don’t think you target him. We know that he’s going to have a big role to play because it’s the Adelaide Oval so spin bowlers do have a lot of work,” Vettori told a press conference on Thursday.
“We’ve just got to pretty much do what we did in our first game in New South Wales … sit on him, get a feel for him, because a lot of our guys have only faced him once before.”
Vettori added that his own workload would “increase exponentially” on an Adelaide pitch not expected to offer the seamers much assistance. The off-spinner Jeetan Patel is a chance to play and Vettori is also eager to make use of the opening batsman Aaron Redmond, whose leg-spin has brought him 96 first-class wickets.
To squeeze Patel into the line-up New Zealand would need to make a tough call to drop one of their fast men: Iain O’Brien, Tim Southee or Chris Martin. The bowlers face a nervous wait until the morning of the match, unlike Australia’s Stuart Clark, who has been assured he will play ahead of Peter Siddle.
Earlier this year, Clark was one of the first selected in Australia’s side but he has been under increased pressure and struggled on the tour of India, where he collected two wickets and was dropped for the fourth Test.
Clark bounced back to be one of Australia’s best at the Gabba with six wickets, but his record at Adelaide is not so strong: in his two Tests here he has four victims at 56.50.
“If Stuart Clark is bowling at his best it doesn’t really matter what the surface is,” Ponting stated. “I’m sure he’d like to bowl at the Gabba every week, most bowlers would.”
Australia clinched the first Test in Brisbane, though it was not as one-sided as they might have expected after they had not triumphed in any of the four Tests in India. Their success became slightly overshadowed by Andrew Symonds’ latest bar-room incident. Symonds had only just made his comeback. But Cricket Australia decided he had done nothing wrong and he kept his place for the Adelaide match.
New Zealand, meanwhile, have included batsman Peter Fulton in place of all-rounder Grant Elliott, who had little impact at the Gabba.
The stakes are high for the tourists. They cannot win the Trans-Tasman Trophy and the best they can do is draw the series. However, should they lose the match they will fall to eighth in the ICC Test rankings, behind West Indies. It would leave them ahead of only Bangladesh and Zimbabwe and would increase their reputation as a challenging one-day side that struggle to adapt to the longer format.
The match should be a celebration for veteran Australian opener Matthew Hayden, who is playing his 100th Test. He has not made a Test century since he last played at this venue, when he posted 103 against India in January. A lingering Achilles tendon injury stopped him from playing in the West Indies and since then he has averaged 26.88 from five Tests. A series-ending Test on a batting-friendly surface against an average bowling attack could be precisely what he needs to get back in form.
Teams (likely):
AUSTRALIA: Matthew Hayden, Simon Katich, Ricky Ponting (captain), Michael Hussey, Michael Clarke, Andrew Symonds, Brad Haddin, Brett Lee, Jason Krejza, Mitchell Johnson, Stuart Clark.
NEW ZEALAND: Aaron Redmond, Jamie How, Jesse Ryder, Ross Taylor, Peter Fulton, Daniel Flynn, Brendon McCullum, Daniel Vettori (captain), Tim Southee, Iain O’Brien, Chris Martin.
Umpires: Billy Doctrove (West Indies) and Rudi Koertzen (South Africa).
Match referee: Chris Broad (England).
—Agencies