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Change the ‘easy option’: Aussie coach defends Marnus’ ‘good-looking 31’ amid calls for axings Australian coach Andrew McDonald has conceded the Test team was poor in Darwin but said that did not mean there will be a change for what is now a must-win match in Mackay in order to square the series against Bangladesh. The spotlight is firmly on opener Jake Weatherald and No.3 Marnus Labuschagne, with Australian greats Mark Waugh and Ricky Ponting among those calling for a rethink at the top of the Australian batting order following the debacle. Watch every ball of Australia vs Bangladesh Test Series live and ad-break free during play with Fox Cricket on Kayo | New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1. McDonald said the selection panel will remove emotion from the equation when considering the team for Mackay but said it was possible the Australians will broaden the squad given after the historic nine-wicket loss at Marrara Oval. “I don’t think it’s going to be like, ‘Oh, we’ve lost this Test match so then suddenly it’s immediately we shift things’. We will work through exactly what we normally work through to come to a conclusion for the best XI that goes out there,” he said. “We’re not emotional around change in terms of, ‘if we lose a game, then we need change’. It’s the ability to think through, ‘Okay, what does it look like? How do we maximise our playing group, and how do we get the best out of them?’ “And if change was to be a part of that, it would be us deciding that the team would be better with someone else in there.” Former opener Matt Renshaw, who was among a broader group who prepared with the Test squad in Brisbane preceding the Bangladesh squad, has been flagged as a possible replacement, while Josh Inglis served as the reserve batter in Darwin. Weatherald adjusted his technique after England exploited a flaw which saw him susceptible to being dismissed LBW, but in Darwin he was caught edging behind for an unconvincing 23 before chopping on for a duck in the second innings. McDonald said it was too soon to know whether the adjustments would stand up to international probing, with difficult assignments against South Africa, New Zealand and India to follow this series leading into the Ashes next year. “There was some change to Jake in terms of his where he lined up and his movement patterns,” he said. “It’s always hard to critique small sample sizes to whether (it) holds up. He dragged one on and drove at one in the first innings and was dismissed, so it’s probably harder with that small a sample size to say, ‘Yep, that’s going to hold up under pressure’, but there was some change.” Labuschagne, who was dropped after the World Test Championship final but returned to the fold for the Ashes, looked in reasonable touch in his second innings before falling for 31 and McDonald said the Queenslander needs “big runs”. “We want runs. That is the bottom line,” McDonald said. “And how he makes them - it was 31 in the second innings - and up until the point he got out, you would say, ‘Geez, he is looking good. He is clipping the ball off his pads. He’s getting through the ball down the ground’, so it is easy for me to sit here and try to defend that, but ultimately it is 31. It is not a big score. “He’s lacked runs. He feels that. We feel that. We’re working incredibly hard as a coaching group … we’ve got to get the best out of Marn as well. “He’s had a bit of a lull. He knows that, he’s gone to work and I think we saw some change in the way that he played, so that’s good. So some of that work that he had done feels as though it’s stuck up under pressure … but he needs some big runs. But it is 31. He is disappointed with that. It is a missed opportunity. He needs some big runs.” He acknowledged the historic scope of the loss would heighten the spotlight on the Australian team, which includes the fact first Test centurion Cameron Green is the only player aged under 30, but declared change would be the “easy option”. “It’s always going to be a conversation, the age profile of the team, where we’re at, how we’re travelling. A loss doesn’t help that. But these players have got a fair bit of cricket left in them, I believe,” he said. “It’s just really how we navigate through it. There’s always going to be calls for change on the back of a loss. There’s going to be an emotion around that from the outside – and even internally. Our guys sit in that change room, and they’re feeling it. You feel a Test loss. It means a lot to them to play for Australia, so let’s not lose that in all this as well. “The easy option is to call for change. A lot of people call for change even when we’re winning. They’re entitled to do that as well on the back of a performance like that. Why wouldn’t they? That’s part of our lot. Lost the game, there are going to be calls about guys not performing to the level they would like or we would like.” McDonald did stress it was not just the batters who were down on form, with the vaunted attack featuring four champions unable to extract a significant amount out of the wicket as Bangladesh made 426, though Josh Hazlewood was solid. He also dismissed criticism surrounding Australia’s preparation. The Aussies have struggled in the first Test at home in recent years but McDonald believes “we planned really well coming in” and that the “prep we got was right”. “You talk about the prep leading in and for this one (we were) probably wound up more than we previously had been because we had the space and time to be able to do that,” he said. “There’s no two preps that are the same. You’ve got players coming out of different leagues, different competitions around the world and it’s easy for me to sit here and say that our prep was excellent (but) ultimately we’re going to be judged on the results that happen from the prep, (and) we’ve lost this game, so people are going to go into that space. “But we truly believe that we plan really well coming in and we didn’t get the performance. So sometimes it’s easy to attach the performance to the prep, and that’s hindsight. We don’t live in hindsight, so we felt as though the prep we got was right.”