After that all that talk about Phil Hughes not being under pressure evaporated in a single tweet on Thursday morning, and Shane Watson made his case as a makeshift opener, the pressure is starting to build on Mike Hussey, not least because of this shocking leave yesterday. As has been mentioned on numerous occasions by various others, Hussey’s form has been poor for some time now, and if Australia were to lose at Edgbaston with ‘Mr Cricket’ failing in the second innings, he may prove to be the fall guy.
Interestingly, given Australia’s struggles so far with the ball, the selectors have left the bowling attack unchanged (aside from the extra option that Watson provides). There have been suggestions in some quarters that in reality, Hughes is paying the price for Mitchell Johnson’s continuing troubles, rather than his own failures with the bat.
Even if all of these decisions prove to have been the wrong ones, however, the quality of Australia’s reserves has been somewhat understated by many in the English media – much as Hughes was built up by the same media based partly on big scores for Middlesex in matches that lots of journalists had seen – and surely Graham Manou can’t be quite as anonymous as he seems. In short, Australia may not have the big names any more, but it is a brave (or foolish) thing to discount players purely because they aren’t as well known as Shane Warne or Brett Lee.
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