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Green won’t be dropped… but come on, make some runs
SEN • December 22nd, 2025 4:30 pm
Cam Green will not be dropped from the Australian Test team… but he certainly needs to score runs sooner than later.
That is the opinion of Gerard Whateley who is confident the 26-year-old all-rounder is the long term middle order option for the Aussies.
Green’s place in the Test XI has again been questioned on the back of scores of 0 and 7 in the third Ashes Test win over England in Adelaide, with some critics favouring Beau Webster as the team’s all-rounder.
Although Whateley does not buy into that talk, he does believe that Green needs to repay the faith shown in him by selectors thus far.
“In my opinion he’s in the phase where he’s under pressure to do the job, but he’s not under pressure with his place in the team,” Whateley said on SEN Mornings.
“He is a better bowler than Webster and notionally he’s a better batter than Webster. But he is not making the runs that they have invested in him and he’s not batting in the manner that he can occupy No.5.
“I’m a bit of a believer that he needs to be 6 or 7 until he starts to churn the runs out. Then for all the investment that’s been made in him, Australia needs to start to see the dividends of that.
“He is such a weapon with the ball and he immediately changes things when he comes into the attack and I wouldn’t be willing to compromise that. There’s a wicket in the first innings that he took at a critical moment when he got (Harry) Brook which is illustration of that.
“But come on, get on with making these runs that’s always been foretold that you’re going to make on Australian soil.
“I can see a world where they both (Green and Webster) play at the MCG but I don’t see Green being dropped in the short term.”
Green has scored just 76 runs at an average of 19 this Ashes series.
Despite the Western Australian’s recent shortcomings with bat in hand, former spinner Bryce McGain agrees that the much-hyped Green is the right guy.
He does see him making the No.5 spot his own given his ability to consistently make runs at Sheffield Shield level.
“A lot of people are saying, ‘No, he’s done, he’s no good’, and it’s been harsher than that,” McGain said on SEN Breakfast.
“The point is that I trust Sheffield Shield cricket. The players that perform well there, it translates to good performance at international level. I trust that so much.
“His form in first-class cricket is 14 centuries and 16 fifties, so he converts big scores. He averages 45, and that’s up there with the greats with the bat.
“His batting performances in first-class cricket put him in the top echelon of bats who then translate to long batting careers for Australia. But this guy is an all-rounder, he bowls 140kph, so that’s where it (the hype) is coming from.
“He is a wicket-taker, he just hasn’t been as durable to hold his body together with stress fractures and all sorts of things. He’s 27 so hopefully all that is behind him and he can settle away.
“I think his role is at 5 or 6. He’s got a more dynamic game. He strikes 160 in T20 cricket so he solved the part they didn’t like initially when he got stuck down.
“We just need to trust him and trust that Shield cricket is good because I can assure you it is the best grounding in world cricket.”
Green and the Australian side will be looking to make it 4-0 when the Boxing Day Test gets underway at the MCG on Friday. You can hear every ball LIVE across the SEN network.
