Austerlia Cricket Team

Ashes 2013: Australia's batting - why is it in crisis?

THIRD INVESTEC ASHES TEST: ENGLAND V AUSTRALIA

• Venue: Emirates Old Trafford, Manchester
 
• Date: 1-5 August
 
• Start time:11:00 BST

Coverage: Ball-by-ball Test Match Special commentary on BBC Radio 5 live sports extra, BBC Radio 4 Long Wave and via the BBC iPlayer Radio app, BBC Sport website & BBC Sport app. Live text commentary on BBC Sport website, app & mobile devices

The irony was lost on no-one.

Just as the Lord's ground staff were sweeping up the entrails left over from Australia's latest humiliation in the Test arena, Mike Hussey was stepping out of a shiny black helicopter in Sydney's Olympic Stadium to trumpet his transfer to a new franchise in the Big Bash League.

The timing was awkward for two reasons. For many cricket fans and pundits, Australia's expanding Twenty20 competition is directly responsible for the Test team's declining standard, which had just been so brutally exposed as England took a 2-0 Ashes lead.

And secondly, the appearance of Hussey as a poster boy for the competition was a stark reminder of what Australia have lost and seem incapable of finding again - a natural-born batsman capable of playing the type of innings that alters the course of a Test match.