JACKSON BARRETT: Aussie cricket batting crisis unfolds after David Warner farewell tour, Steve Smith bombshell

There’s a golden ticket into the Test side dangling above domestic openers in the first two rounds of the Sheffield Shield season.

Cam Bancroft, Marcus Harris and Sam Konstas are all looking up and staring at it. But not a single player has leapt above the pack to try and snatch it.

And it could leave selectors with an issue, unless someone breaks clear of the rest in a two-match Australia A series starting next week.

Bancroft has failed three times in as many innings this home summer. Michael Neser had his number in a rare pair earlier this month and there was nothing confident or decisive around his eight-run innings against Tasmania on Monday.

Harris has scored a century for Victoria on a pancake wicket at Junction Oval and couldn’t go on with it facing a better bowling attack against NSW.

Konstas, a near clone of Michael Clarke and already reaching the heights of a young Ricky Ponting, scored a hundred in both innings of the match against South Australia.

His big test was a face-off with Scott Boland. Konstas’ weakness during the Under 19 World Cup was bowlers targeting his stumps and particularly balls swinging back into him.

Boland tormented the 19-year-old before dismissing him for two at the MCG on Monday with that same probing line.

To make things even messier, Steve Smith, the man set to shuffle back to No.4 this summer and create the top-order vacancy, has launched a he-said-he-said exercise with his own captain and the chairman of selectors.

“I got asked where I’d prefer to bat and said four. I didn’t ask. But I also said I’m happy batting wherever. I’m not really too fussed,” he said after making three in NSW’s clash with Victoria.

“So I saw a few things last week saying that I’ve requested to bat at four. That wasn’t the case. I said I’m happy to bat wherever you like me to bat, but yeah, four would be my ideal position.

“Obviously, there’s a spot there now with Greeny out, and I think just conversations we had after New Zealand with particularly Marnus and Uzi, they hated me up top, to be honest.

“They wanted me behind them. So that was a big part of it. And then, obviously, I’ve got a decent record at four. I’ve done pretty well at four for a number of years now (and) I feel like it’s probably where I can have my best input for this team at the moment.”

So Marnus Labuschagne and Usman Khawaja have told Smith they don’t want him opening at about the same time Khawaja went public and said he wants Travis Head to do the job with him.

It doesn’t exactly feel like the most welcoming environment for Khawaja’s likely new opening partner.

But if no one goes big and makes it impossible not to pick them across the next three weeks, are selectors ready to throw anyone into the deep end?

Rather than giving someone a go last summer against Pakistan, West Indies and an off-Broadway trip to New Zealand, Australia gave David Warner a farewell lap of honour and flirted with Smith at the top of the order.

Now they’re swimming in the deep end until at least the end of next summer, with a Border-Gavaskar Trophy series and the Ashes in back-to-back home summers.

Don’t entirely discount the possibility of a middle-order player shuffling up to the top just yet.

The most likely would be Labuschagne, although he could be opening the batting for Queensland this month and isn’t.

There is a good chance that by November, when it comes time to pick a Test squad, Australia are more confident in the players they can add to the middle-order than they are at the top.

Nathan McSweeney has again been named captain of Australia A, an indication of trust from the selectors and he is the batter that has started the summer well and put together sustained performances.

Or could Josh Inglis play in the same team as Alex Carey? The West Australian wicket-keeper has pulled his State out of deep trouble twice in two matches so far and selectors picked both gloveman in white-ball games on the tour of England last month.

It’s worth factoring into all this that Khawaja is soon to turn 38. If he makes it to the Ashes next summer he will surely call stumps soon after and Australia will be chasing two openers.

It feels as if this is where Konstas comes in, with another summer of facing the best domestic bowlers in the country under his belt.

But do they have someone they can trust in the meantime? Harris or Bancroft have three weeks to prove it.