“He looked together and his game was in good order, and the way he played under pressure with his brother Mitch to put a partnership together was really crucial for us at that stage”.
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Australia claimed a thrilling three-wicket victory inside three days over New Zealand at the Adelaide Oval in the first day-night cricket Test in history.
“I thought that was a fair way of doing it – so Nevill’s 132 was brilliant”.
Marsh has also given a strong indication that Josh Hazlewood is in line to be rested at some point over the summer as Australia continue to juggle a pace attack that has been hit hard by injury and retirement this year.
Smith said he was confident Peter Siddle would be fine for the start of the West Indies series at Blundstone Arena, believing the 10-day gap between Tests would help him overcome the back spasm he battled in Adelaide. Coulter-Nile, who has played 13 one-day internationals and 11 Twenty20s for Australia, is short on match practice after being suspended from his most recent Sheffield Shield outing for showing dissent to an umpire.
He later wrapped up New Zealand’s innings by bowling Boult for five, with Mitchell Marsh capturing three for 59.
“Hopefully all the bowlers from the Adelaide Test recover well over the next few days but we are mindful our fast bowlers have had a heavy workload over this series”, Rod Marsh, chairman of selectors, said.
As a precaution selectors have placed Scott Boland on standby in case of further injury problems heading into the Test. “But we don’t get too many of them so we’ll go with our gut feeling on Coulter-Nile, we like him as a bowler”. Once Mitchell Starc went down everyone’s mind turned straight to Nathan Coulter-Nile.
West Indies begin their tour of Australia with a warm-up game against the Cricket Australia XI from December 2.
“Not only do we have the pace but I think we have bowlers to extract the movement”, Holder said.
“Last night he got the new ball swinging and seaming around, which a lot of the bowlers did in these conditions”.
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“They are the ones we are banking on to give the knowledge to the younger players that haven’t been here, but I think everyone has to take ownership over the next week so they know what to do when we get into the Test matches”, he said.
