Australia’s top three has been failing for a year, and Darwin only made it impossible to ignore
Pat Cummins called it a trend rather than a bad week, and the averages back him up. The awkward part is that Australia’s replacement options are barely better.
Aug 17, 2026
Pat Cummins used a careful word after Australia lost to Bangladesh in Darwin. Trend. He was asked whether one defeat justified changing a batting order, and his answer was that it might be one Test, but it might also be something that has been happening for a while, and the job over the next couple of days is working out which. That is a captain telling you the selectors are about to have an uncomfortable meeting.
They should. And the case for change does not rest on what happened last week at all.
The numbers were bad long before Darwin
Jake Weatherald and Marnus Labuschagne, two of Australia’s top three, are both averaging under 27 since the start of last summer’s Ashes. Weatherald has 224 runs from six Tests and 12 innings at 20.36, with one fifty. Labuschagne has not made a Test hundred since the 2023 Ashes in England, a drought now past three years and 40 innings.
Neither of those numbers came from a bad week in the Northern Territory. They came from a year of Test cricket in which Australia mostly kept winning anyway, which is the thing that lets a problem sit. Darwin was the first time the batting cost them a match they were expected to win, and suddenly a set of averages everyone already knew about turned into a selection crisis.
The match itself was ugly in a specific way. Australia lost four wickets before lunch on day one after Cummins chose to bat, made 198 in 53 overs, and then 284 in 95.1 second time round. Steve Smith, with 71 and 44, and Cameron Green, who made 104 in the second innings after being dismissed on the stroke of lunch on day one, were the only Australians to pass 31 across the game. Weatherald made 23 and 0. Labuschagne made 1 and 31. Bangladesh’s 426 was more than either Australian innings by a distance, and they knocked off the target with nine wickets standing.
The problem is that there is no obvious replacement
Here is why I suspect Australia have let this run: the alternatives are not good. Josh Inglis was the spare batter in Darwin, but he has limited first-class experience in the top four, with most of his run-scoring built at No. 5 or below. His most recent Test appearance, at Adelaide during the Ashes, had him at No. 7. Asking him to open or bat three would be inventing a solution rather than picking one.
Matthew Renshaw is the only other regular top-order batter who was training with the wider group in Brisbane. Cooper Connolly batted at eight in his one Test, in Galle last year, though he did open the batting and make a hundred in an ODI against Bangladesh in June. Campbell Kellaway was bowled by Taskin Ahmed for a duck in the Cricket Australia XI match in Darwin last week, which is poor timing for a man auditioning. Nathan McSweeney is in England playing county cricket for Northamptonshire.
Cummins insisted the door is open wider than the 13-man squad, saying there are plenty of available players ready to go and that selectors can pick from anywhere. Mark Waugh called the Weatherald and Labuschagne selection question a 50-50 call. It is hard to disagree with either of them, and that is exactly the trouble. When the incumbents are failing and the replacements are unproven, doing nothing always looks defensible for one more Test.
Which is why now is the moment
Australia have a long run of Test cricket ahead of them, and the second Test against Bangladesh starts on 22 August at the Great Barrier Reef Arena in Mackay, a ground that has never staged a men’s Test. If you are going to hand a top-order place to somebody new and give them a few matches to settle, a home Test against a side ranked below you is the cheapest possible place to do it. Wait, and the next chance to experiment comes with far more at stake.
The counter-argument is real enough. Labuschagne has 60-odd Tests of credit in the bank and has come back from a slump before. Weatherald is six Tests into a career and dropping him now might end it. Cummins said the group would review footage and methods, and that if a change of approach is needed they have about a week to make it, which sounds like a captain hoping the fix is technical rather than personnel.
It might be. But a year of the same two positions failing is not a bad patch, and Bangladesh have just shown what happens when a side with a settled plan meets a top order that folds before lunch. Australia can either find that out again in Mackay, or find out something useful instead.