Sam Konstas to debut; Head and Rohit ready to go

Melbourne: Much of the intrigue on Tuesday centred around the fitness of two key figures on either side — Australia’s Travid Head and India’s Rohit Sharma.

While Head was hindered by a slight quad strain he sustained during the Brisbane Test, Rohit was dealt a blow on his left knee during training on Sunday. And with the Boxing Day Test starting on Thursday, it was vital to see how they had recovered.

First up was Head. The Aussies practised earlier in the day but Head didn’t exactly throw himself around during the fielding session and then batted for just 15 minutes in the nets against the throw down specialists. He then had a chat with physio Nick Jones and coach Andrew McDonald before ending his session early.

Later in the press conference McDonald cleared the air a bit.

“Has he got some things to work through? Yeah, he has,” he said. “So that’s what you would have seen. There’s no concern at the moment. Has he been officially ticked off? I’m not sure. I didn’t see the sort of back-end of his training session there, but I’m pretty confident he’ll play.

“I think he looked good with the bat in hand so obviously skills are in good order. It’ll just be basically what risk is associated with that. He had a small strain to the quad. But no concerns from my end. He’s been able to be running, so I think he’ll be fully functional come the game time.”

McDonald confirmed that Australia will make at least two changes – 19-year-old Sam Konstas replaces Nathan McSweeney as opener and Scott Boland expectedly coming in for the injured Josh Hazlewood.

“We said from the get go, when leading into the summer, that we wouldn’t shy away, and age was no barrier,” McDonald said about Konstas. “And what he’s shown is an array of shots, the ability to put pressure back on to opponents and he gets his opportunity. We’re really excited for him.”

The Australia head coach also confirmed that Mitchell Marsh is fit enough to bowl a good number of overs at the MCG if required.

The bigger worry for India, though, was whether Rohit was okay after that knock on the knee. The Indian captain was into the presser before hitting the nets, and though he said he was fine, for most of the practice session he was simply having a chat with coach Gautam Gambhir and selector Ajit Agarkar.

That made many wonder whether his recovery was still a work in progress. It was only after all the other top-order batters had finished batting did Rohit finally got going. He was moving well and executed some powerful pull shots to put all doubts to rest.

The Indian skipper has averaged just 11.69 in his last 13 innings and would like nothing more than to just be able to concentrate on his batting.