New Delhi, Oct 23 2024-
Former Australia skipper Mark Taylor said young batter Jake Fraser-McGurk needs a bit more of fine-tuning in order to make runs in the longer format and be considered for Test selection in future.
Fraser-McGurk, seen by many as a successor of David Warner in the opening role, hasn’t played in Sheffield Shield games for South Australia in the current season after playing lots of white-ball cricket internationally and in the IPL, leaving him no space to work on his red-ball skills.
He will be next seen in action when Australia play ODIs against Pakistan at home from November 4. “I don’t know at this stage (whether he could play Test cricket), but I couldn’t put him in there right now. If you look back at David’s career, yes he started as a T20 player, but he always had a fairly sound technique as well.”
“He didn’t need a lot of fine-tuning to turn that ability to hit the ball into making runs in longer formats and I’m not sure that Fraser-McGurk is that sort of player yet. There’s no doubt he can whack a ball over the fence a number of times and can change a game, but he certainly hasn’t shown me enough to suggest he could do that against India or England over a five-day game,” said Taylor to Wide World of Sports.
He also feels the Australian selection committee has taken a different approach about selecting the Test team in past few years due to youngsters not playing red-ball cricket in heaps, due to a big step-up in T20 games played globally.
“The problem that the world of cricket has these days is that’s now the norm. With the amount of T20 cricket, both here at home and around the world, players get less opportunity to play Sheffield Shield or red-ball cricket. I think selectors these days are making decisions not just based on red-ball runs. They just look at overall form and go from there.” (Agency)
