New Delhi, Feb 13 () After the horrific show in the first Test, former Australia pacer Mitchell Johnson has urged the selectors to take a bold call and axe David Warner, elevate Matthew Renshaw to open and bring Travis Head in the middle-order in the second Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy here.
Warner, who has played nine Tests in India and scored 399 runs at an average of 22.16, has been facing criticism after failing to deliver with the bat in the first Test in Nagpur getting dismissed for mere scores of 1 and 10 as the visitors suffered a huge loss by an innings and 132 runs within three days.
“I would drop David Warner, elevate Matthew Renshaw to open and bring Travis Head into the middle order. If it’s about horses for courses policy based on the previous form in the subcontinent, why didn’t that apply to Warner? That’s where it got murky for me,” Johnson wrote in a column for Western Australia.
As per the media reports, Travis Head, who was dropped for the first Test, could open the batting in place of Warner in the second. However, head coach Andrew McDonald has dismissed the report and said there has been no discussion over the matter.
“We haven’t discussed that at all. We’ll discuss the performance of the first Test match. We haven’t even got into a selection discussion. The benefit out of losing the game so quickly is we’ve got a little bit more thinking time to work through what scenarios are for us and that starts today. It’s a sample size of one game, in Nagpur,” told the media on Sunday.
The second Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy will commence at the Arun Jaitley Stadium here on February 17.
bc/bsk