Case of Jackson Bird emblematic of cricket’s demand for players to be multi-faceted

Osman Samiuddin looks at cricket's desire for players to be multi-faceted, most recently highlighted by bowler Jackson Bird's omission from the Australia setup on the basis of his batting.

Jackson Bird was omitted from Australia's Test squad on the sregnth - or weakness - of his batting. Scott Barbour / Getty Images

Seven for 65, nine for 52, five for 64, nine for 112 and nine for 60: these are the sins of Jackson Bird, for which he seems to have been omitted from a place in Australia’s squad for the Test series against South Africa.

They are not his personal contributions in either capacity. Indeed he was not involved in any of the Tests from which those figures are culled. Those are Australia’s batting collapses from their tour of Sri Lanka earlier this summer, where they were wiped away 3-0.

They were failures of Australia’s batting and are, do not forget, part of a continuum. Australia have been awful against spin, in conditions favourable to spin, for a long, long time now.

Yet it was these meltdowns that Rodney Marsh referred to when explaining the reason behind Bird’s omission, so that one, not entirely unreasonable, way of looking at the decision is to say that Bird has paid for the failures of men who are paid to bat.

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Another way is to think of it, actually, as an insult to those batsmen at the top. So little is the faith in their abilities that they are looking for bowlers who can make up for their inadequacies.

“I talked to Jackson again this morning and I said to Jackson the thing that probably cost him a place was his batting,” Marsh, Australia’s chief selector, said. “We’ve got to get runs at the bottom of the order as well, particularly against a very good attack.”

Bird is not much of a batsman. He has a first-class career average of 9.10, which is not Chris Martin territory (3.71) but will nicely nestle in between those of Courtney Walsh (11.32) and Glenn McGrath (7.75).

The man chosen in his place, Joe Mennie, averages over 18 and has five first-class fifties in 42 matches.

Marsh probably did not mean to explain the selection-omission as badly as he did. That is to say, selectors would have been swayed by Mennie’s bowling form as well — with 51 wickets, he was the leading wicket-taker in the 2015/16 Sheffield Shield season (though Bird was not far behind, with 40 from three less matches).

And within the high-octane, fairly macho world of Australian pace bowling, Bird’s relative lack of pace has always worked against him. Mennie, who is younger by a couple of years, has the kind of muscly pace that keeps batsmen honest. Marsh could not stop raving about the length that he bowls at: “No-one likes bowlers that bowl a good length,” he said.

So it not as if it is a decision bereft of any kind of logic whatsoever. Nevertheless, it is one that reaffirms the direction of the modern game, in which all cricketers must serve a utilitarian purpose. Sure you are a bowler, but we are going to need you to score some runs.

It is something wicketkeepers have had to get used to, since the likes of Adam Gilchrist raised expectations unreasonably of what a batsman-wicketkeeper can do. In that skill, cricket has gone almost the other way — now it is less important how well a keeper can keep than it is how he can bat.

The logic of looking for, or expecting, bowlers to contribute runs to the cause is flawless, of course. The current England side is especially adept at proving it so. In fact, of late they have even looked like the logical outcome of this particular Australian selectorial decision.

England’s top and middle order has been vulnerable for a while now, but it is because their batting order never ends that they can still win more Tests than they lose. They have been kept afloat in Bangladesh almost entirely by the lower order.

India, at home especially, have found another level because Ravinder Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin — to name but two — bat so well. They are supposed to be, remember, India’s strike bowlers.

There are still bastions for the old way. Take Pakistan, who just cannot find or develop the batting skills of their bowlers. Not that it has hurt them as they hover around the top of the rankings.

Maybe they know that bowlers should be good enough in the first place to do what they are supposed to do: bowl sides out.

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