The Wizards of Oz, a sneak preview

One major criticism of the senior team on the Ashes tour was the poor captaincy — and the lack of available alternatives. So the aim is to train youngsters in the art of leadership. Therefore, Aaron Finch replaces Usmaan Khwaja as captain in the second match here tomorrow. “We are basically testing the players. Many of them have leadership qualities but never got a chance to lead because a captain is fixed for a certain period’’, said coach Brian McFayden.

‘‘We want to break away from that norm and try and give the responsibility to a larger pool of players. The idea is to put maximum responsibility on the captain and judge him how he handles the pressure situation.’’

He explains the objectives for this tour: ‘‘We wanted to build a side, develop certain qualities within each player and judge them on how well they have performed on the tour. Results are just one thing, we would love to win but on the whole we want a bunch of committed players who will give their 100% on the ground.’’ Though it seemed a bit odd on Monday to hear the Australian coach ducking questions and instead pushing the captain in front to answer questions on their strange decision to bat first on a damp wicket, the picture becomes clearer the following day.

The Australians are experimenting, in fact they have always been game to it; this is just another phase of their ongoing process. Khwaja, born in Pakistan but settled in Sydney since 1989, gets a chance to play, and even lead the side.

‘‘Over here, we don’t make such a huge issue of nationalities but it’s not often to see a non-Australian playing for the national side. “