An Oddsworth Opinion
Where Travis Head's away record says he should bat
The story
Travis Head opened with the recalled Nic Maddinson in the first Test against South Africa at Durban and fell for 9, with Australia 187 for 6 when bad light ended day one. Before the match Allan Border argued that Head's success at the top had come against weaker bowling and that he belonged in the middle order.
Wiaan Mulder angles one across Travis Head on the first morning at Kingsmead. There is the faintest of sounds, South Africa send it upstairs, and Kyle Verreynne's catch stands. Head is out for 9, and by the time bad light ends day one Australia are 187 for 6. Allan Border had seen something like it coming.
Before the Test, Border said Head had done a very good job as an opener but would be better in the middle order, and that South Africa were "the Real McCoy" after a run of lesser attacks. The record sits awkwardly with that. In 20 Test innings as an opener before Durban, Head averaged 52.1, while the other openers in those same Tests averaged 28.3.
The case about weak attacks
The case against Head at the top rests on where the runs came from. Nine of his twelve home innings as an opener were in the 2025/26 Ashes, the other three against Bangladesh in Darwin and Mackay in August, and the hundreds at Perth, Adelaide and Sydney all came in that one series. If those attacks were so ordinary, the other openers in those Tests did not notice. They averaged 21.8 between them, against Head's 55.8.
Away from home, the middle order is the problem
Border's fix assumes the middle order is the safe place to send Head when the cricket gets hard. Away from home it has been the hardest place of all. In 43 innings at Nos. 4 to 6 outside Australia, Head averages 30.1, below the 38.7 the other middle-order batters managed in the same Tests, with one hundred.
Opening away, from eight innings in India in 2023 and Sri Lanka in 2025, he averages 45.9 against 38.0 for the other openers in those Tests. The away middle order is the one corner of his career where he has fallen behind the batters around him, and it is where Border wants him back. Sending him down the order whenever a tour gets hard is a bit like taking the washing back indoors because the sun has come out.
How much the opening record can carry
Border does have a point, and it lies in those away innings. Of the 397 balls Head faced opening in India and Sri Lanka, 290 came from spinners. Fast bowlers sent down only 107 of them and never got him out, which is lovely and proves very little. His away record as an opener is two spin tours of Asia, and the part of it that looks like Durban, an away Test against Anrich Nortje, Marco Jansen and Mulder, barely exists.
In the middle order away from home he has faced that question many more times, and fast bowlers have dismissed him 28 times at Nos. 4 to 6 outside Australia. So the choice is between an exam he has hardly sat and one he has sat often and kept scraping through. One edge to Verreynne does not make the old exam the better place to send him.
Average as an opener 52.1Not out
Who else could open
The other reason to move Head would be that somebody else has earned his place, and the Test record says nobody has. Since January 2024, Head has made 767 runs at 51.1 opening in Tests. Jake Weatherald, the best of the rest in that time, averaged 21.9 in 11 innings, and Sam Konstas and Nathan McSweeney did worse.
The selectors' answer in Durban was to recall Nic Maddinson, who had not played a Test since 2016 or a first-class match since March 2025, and to send Matt Renshaw, a Queensland opener, down to No. 5 to cover for Cameron Green. Followed calmly, that reasoning has a specialist opener batting out of position so that a batter who has not been playing can open. Weatherald, left out of this XI altogether, made 1,468 Shield runs at 45.9 opening over the last two seasons, the most of any Shield opener, against 30.8 for every opener in the competition. He is the partner for Head, and Renshaw, who averaged 49.9 at the top for Queensland last summer, is the reserve rather than a stopgap No. 5.
Australia's strongest order with everyone fit
Put every Australian batter back on the park, Green and Josh Inglis included, and the strongest order still starts with Head. Weatherald opens with him, as the pair did against Bangladesh in August; his Test innings so far have been thin, but two seasons as the heaviest scorer among Shield openers earn him the next long run, with Renshaw waiting behind him. Marnus Labuschagne keeps No. 3 for now, though he has not made a Test hundred since the start of 2024, and that is a bigger worry for this order than anything Head has done; Jason Sangha, the best middle-order batter in the Shield outside the Test side over the last two seasons, is the man who should be making him nervous. Steve Smith stays at No. 4.
Green's return is the moment Border's fix would normally be applied, with Head shuffled down to make room. The order Australia used in August, when Green was fit, already answers that. Green goes back to No. 5, Alex Carey keeps the gloves at No. 6 as the first-choice keeper, Beau Webster bats at No. 7, and Inglis, whose Galle hundred came at No. 5, waits behind Carey. Head's place at the top is untouched.
Mulder's ball at Kingsmead was a good delivery to a batter in the right job, and whenever Australia next bat, in Durban or on any tour after it, Head should be walking out first.