There’s potential in Spencer Johnson and Lance Morris for sure.

If Mitch Marsh is not going to bowl much, be possibly needs to be given more responsibility to bat higher at No. 4 with Green slotted back into No. 6 as the all-rounder.

I reckon we’ve missed a trick with not rotating the bowlers at all recently. (Boland, Neser, Jhye Richardson and Jason Behrendorff, etc. will all be past their best when the next opportunity knocks.

Also, we could have been smarter in re-selecting Bancroft and/or Renshaw earlier, particularly in England where Warner generally struggled against Stuart Broad.

There may come a time when the current Australian players have played on too long and retire at the same time. I think we’re close to possibly becoming Dad’s Army and losing an Ashes series at home to England in 2025/26, simply because they will be younger and at their peak and/or we have a new generation of players in the team that are inexperienced.

You have to be better not younger !

You raise some excellent points Rod.

I had a look at the England team and the majority of their players are coming into their prime and will be for the 2025/26 Ashes. The same for India next summer.

It’s very hard to be critical of a team that just retained the Ashes, won the Test World Championship and the One Day World Cup. Australia has had a great year.

However, I do hope the coaches, selectors and management take a deeper look into the team/squad because if England’s wicket keeper in the first two Ashes took the catches and the Pakistan team did the same, things might have been a whole lot different in terms of both series.

I’m not sure Marsh should be batting higher than 6. He’s a such an attacking batter and coming in at 2 for 20 will he take on the responsibility to knuckle down. If Green remains at 4 and is a project player, he needs to be given an opportunity to learn from Smith and Khawaja about building an innings. But he does need to be scoring big run more regularly.

My big concern is who are the players next in line?

After 6 Sheffield Shield games in 2023-24 only 5 of the top 10 run scorers are averaging more than 40.

NSW only has one top order batter averaging more than 28 in 2023-24.

It’ll be fascinating to see the make up of the first test team for the next Ashes series.