Jackson Barrett: Australia will almost certainly stick fat with their guys after battering from India in Perth

Mitchell Starc said after day one the match was in “fast-forward”. Then India stole the remote, did whatever they want with it, and Australia could never snatch back enough control to press pause for a while. Very rarely in the past two decades has an Australia team been beaten into submission like they have in Perth. They were rolled for 98 in the 2010 Boxing Day Test and were forced to watch Jonathon Trott post a massive century in a score of 513. That defeat brought about the debut of Usman Khawaja in the dead-rubber final Test. The 2016 embarrassment against South Africa in Hobart, where Australia were rolled for 85 and 161 triggered an overhaul of the top-order and the debuts of Nic Maddinson, Peter Handscomb and Matthew Renshaw. But debate is raging about what’s next after this Perth disaster. Australia are not an emotional team and that’s to their credit through a stunning period of success. Though it does mean the public might not get the response it’s after between Perth and Adelaide, because it is almost as hard to get out of this side as it is to get in it. The heat is on Marnus Labuschagne. A sustained run of poor form has come to a head here and he looks a man struggling to escape his own muddled mind. He looked so hyper-focused on the Jasprit Bumrah ball that might leave him that he wasn’t equipped for the one that tailed back into his pads and he looked a broken batter when he tripped over his own feet trying to get out of the way of it. What will almost certainly save him is what’s in the cupboard. Josh Inglis is the reserve batter on two and while his early-season form was excellent, his first-class average of 36.49 isn’t sparkling and he has never batted in the top order in that format. And the rest of the first-class ranks certainly don’t thrill either. There’s no time at all for anyone else to emerge out of the domestic competition. There is one more round of Sheffield Shield matches, to begin on the same day as the Adelaide Test, and then none until after the second Test in Sri Lanka has started in February. It’s almost the polar opposite to 12 months ago, when they did have the opportunity to either part with David Warner earlier or, rather than the short-lived Steve Smith-opening experiment, reward the scorching form of Cam Bancroft. Other than Travis Head for a Test in India and making Cam Green wait for his return from injury, it’s been a long time since Australia has genuinely discarded a player. Marcus Harris was the last at the end of the 2021-2022 Ashes. It means dropping a player is unlikely and the reshuffle some are calling for his almost fanciful, but fans will want accountability for the heavy defeat to fall somewhere.