I don’t mean to be unkind to the teams visiting Australia this summer, but the West Indies and South Africa are not likely to provide the level of competition that India or England might represent for Australia, so I’m not expecting a lot of excitement from either of the truncated Test series. I earnestly hope to be proved wrong and if either team kicks Australia’s admittedly entitled and somewhat smug backside, I’d be the first to cheer.

So what can we talk about?

DAVID WARNER:

The talk about possibly returning David Warner to a leadership role baffles me. Why pick this fight? Cricket Australia would be roundly criticized, especially by England fans, who loathe Warner. But as far as I can tell, there’s precious little love for Warner among Australian fans, either. So what would Cricket Australia gain from it? At 36, Warner doesn’t have much time left in any case. Don’t pick that scab. Let him play out this Test summer and let him fade away to spend his last couple of years in T20. For God’s sake, don’t pick him for the 2023 Ashes in England. Stuart Broad is already whittling his voodoo doll of Warner.

GENERATIONAL CHANGE:

As usual, Australia is blessed with quick bowlers. Michael Neser, Mark Steketee, Jhye Richardson and Scott Boland are all  excellent Test-quality bowlers and would be leading the attack in any cricketing nation if they didn’t have the misfortune to be born Australian. Shame, really. The best they can hope for is for Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood to all break down simultaneously.

There are fewer batsmen pushing for Test honours, though. Warner is 36 and Khawaja will be 36 on 18 December, so although the recent performance of both suggests they’ll keep their spots for the 2022-23 summer, surely both spots will need to be filled soon thereafter.

Still only 26, Queensland’s Matt Renshaw is pushing his way back to the front of the queue after losing his spot in the Test team after 11 Tests. Plenty of batsmen get their first chance when they’re too young, get dropped, and return when they have matured. Perhaps Renshaw will do the same. He has experimented both as an opener and in the middle order for Queensland, but if he maintains his current form, he’d have to be the leading candidate to replace Warner at the top of the order. After an underwhelming 2021-22 Sheffield Shield (410 runs at 29.29), Renshaw punched out 620 runs at 47.69 for Somerset in the 2022 English summer, scored 200 not out for Queensland in the second Shield match of the 2022-23 season, and made 81 and 101 not out for the Prime Minister’s XI against the West Indies in late November.

Peter Handscomb of Victoria (31) is probably the next candidate for a spot in the middle order if Khawaja becomes unavailable. He, too, fell from favour and lost his Test spot but racked up 697 runs at 49.79 in the 2021-22 Shield and has made 544 runs at 108.80 in the first four games of the 2022-23 Shield season, assisted with a 281 not out in Game 2. He also made 55 and 75 for the Prime Minister’s XI against the West Indies.

Beyond those two names, the pickings are slim.