Matt Renshaw has been here before, but the 30-year-old reckons he is better placed than ever to make the step back into Australia’s Test XI. Three Shield hundreds this summer – 499 runs at 49.90 on some awkward surfaces – have pushed his name towards the top of the selection pile just as a middle-order spot opens up after Usman Khawaja’s retirement and Jake Weatherald’s mixed Ashes.
“I feel like my game’s in as good order as possible,” Renshaw said on the Gold Coast as Cricket Australia confirmed the 2026-27 itinerary. “I think the way that I’m batting, I can adapt to any situation. I feel like I can attack, I can defend and I’m enjoying myself. So if I do get to play Test cricket again soon that’d be awesome, but there’s a lot of other things that I’m really enjoying at the moment.”
The left-hander’s initial Test burst back in 2016-17 yielded an average north of 50 after six matches and that 184 against Pakistan in Sydney. The glow faded quickly; by the next Ashes he was out of favour and, bar a short recall in India three years ago, has lived on the fringes since.
What has changed is the white-ball wrinkle to his game. Drafted late into this year’s T20 World Cup, he peeled off 37 against Ireland and 65 versus Zimbabwe before a puzzling omission for the do-or-die Sri Lanka clash. Earlier, an ODI debut in India and a 51-ball hundred for Brisbane Heat underlined a more expansive skill-set.
“With my one-day cricket, specifically, I think I’m able to manipulate the game a bit more and we’re sort of seeing it a little bit more around the world about trying to change the way that bowlers are bowling,” he explained. “I think in the past in red-ball cricket, the bowlers are locking in for top of off and you’ve got to try and leave as well as you can, but even now just walking down the wicket changes the angle [of] the bowler, the length, gets him thinking what you’re trying to do. So if you can have a little bit of doubt in the bowler’s mind I think as a batter that’s something that’s really important.”
That willingness to tinker – moving around the crease, altering tempo – feels timely. Test attacks rarely serve up long half-volleys anymore; batters need methods beyond the textbook leave. For a national panel keen on “versatility”, Renshaw suddenly ticks both the traditional opener’s box and the modern middle-order one.
Nathan Hauritz, now a Queensland assistant, sees merit. “He’s found a scoring gear that doesn’t compromise his defence,” Hauritz told ABC radio. “Selectors can plonk him at three, five, even open, and he won’t look out of place.”
Yet numbers alone may not be enough. Marcus Harris and Peter Handscomb still churn away, while youngsters Campbell Kellaway and Teague Wyllie have been flagged as long-term projects. Chief selector George Bailey said recently he wanted batters “banging the door down, not just knocking politely”.
Renshaw accepts that. His white-ball exposure reinforced, he says, the value of seizing odd chances. “You never know when the game will throw something up. A year ago I wasn’t even in the T20 conversation,” he noted. “Now I’ve shown I can adjust quickly, which hopefully counts for something.”
From a team perspective, Australia’s home summer brings West Indies and Pakistan before away tours to Bangladesh and South Africa. That mix of pace and spin conditions could suit a horses-for-courses approach. Renshaw’s record in Asia – a patient 68 in Ranchi back in 2017 still resonates – may help.
Former Test captain Ian Chappell thinks the timing is right. “There’s a vacancy, there’s a guy in form, and he’s learnt to be proactive. Pick him,” Chappell wrote in his column this week. Others, more guarded, feel Weatherald deserves one more look after flashes of promise during the drawn Ashes.
What is clear is Renshaw isn’t banking solely on the phone call. He will head to county cricket in May, a stint with Kent designed to keep the runs flowing and, perhaps, remind selectors that he can grind as well as glide. A two-month winter on seaming pitches, he says, is “never bad for your technique”.
Australia will announce their first Test squad of the new cycle in late October. Until then, Renshaw can only keep scoring and keep talking the talk – not in a brash way, more a quiet confidence earned the hard way. If the selectors decide his adaptability really is an asset, his second comeback could arrive before Christmas. If not, the domestic game has a far more rounded player than the one who debuted aged 20.
Either way, the story is still rolling – not neat, not finished, a bit scruffy round the edges. And that, Renshaw might argue, is cricket.
