Have Australia’s cricket selectors finally lost trust with Marnus Labuschagne ahead of WTC final at Lord’s?

There are two things that count in the minds of selectors. Form and trust.

Trust is earned over time and — for Australia’s cricket selectors across the past decade — has been what matters most.

But bad form can erode at trust.

That’s where Marnus Labuschagne finds himself ahead of the showpiece World Test Championship final from June 11.

The jack-in-a-box top-order batter averaged 60 in Test cricket across all of 2019, 2020 and 2021 and 56.29 in 2022.

He is on a downward spiral that surely must be chipping away at the trust selectors hold in him. While there is a pair of important Boxing Day Test 70s on his record, Labuschagne hasn’t scored a Test century since the 2023 Ashes series and that tour was otherwise a poor one.

His form now doesn’t stand up either. From two matches and three digs at Glamorgan in division two county cricket, he has scored 27 runs, including a first-up duck.

At the weekend, he was out for 23 edging to second slip. It was a good ball on a probing line and a length that trapped his feet, but it was one of those ugly-looking dismissals where he left himself open and his back hip swung around after contact with his outside edge.

Selectors are picking a team here for a one-off final. Four innings and five days of cricket to decide a title. But unlike a final at any other tournament, Australia hasn’t played a Test since the first week of February and there is no exposed form for players both at this level and in this format.

Labuschagne had been slated for a spot at the top of the order under the common wisdom that this is about getting as many of your best players in the team as possible, even if they have to adapt to new roles.

Cam Green is back and is firming to bat at No.3, with Steve Smith at four and selectors are unlikely to throw Sam Konstas into the heat of this contest.

Former Australian opener Ed Cowan said this week Labuschagne is still “above the selection line” but warned the worm was heading sub-terranean.

“Often in England at the top of the order you’re so mindful of the lbw, low bounce, late movement that either seams or swings that you start opening your stance a bit to access the ball and it brings the outside edge in,” Cowan, who played county cricket for two clubs, told the Grandstand Cricket Podcast.

“It’s these constant tinkers you’ve got to go through, particularly when you’re not moving as fluently as you’d like and you’re more worried about getting out than scoring runs and so the conditions are different.”

Green’s three centuries in five matches was more than the Test team bosses needed to see to pick him and he is now almost certain to return to the side for the first time in 16 months.

The squad member bolting into contention is Josh Inglis.

Inglis hasn’t been playing in the right format, but he has been playing at the right level. With two Tests and one ton to his name he is starting to build trust. What he does have is plenty of good form.

The wicketkeeper-batter blasted 73 off 42 balls to catapult Punjab Kings to the top of the Indian Premier League table on Monday night. That’s after spending almost two weeks back home in Perth, unsure until even after his team’s first game back, if he would return to the hastily resumed tournament.

Even those who work closely with Inglis at home in Western Australia hold concerns over his ability to open the batting in red-ball cricket.

That’s not a long-term solution, nor does it need to be.

Whoever Australia calls on to open the batting is going to be given genuine grief by South Africa’s Marco Jansen and Kagiso Rabada. There’s the Dukes ball, the Lord’s slope, the early-season wickets that suit the new ball.

There are growing concerns over whether Labuschagne — who is clearly still finetuning his game in the United Kingdom — is the right man.

Inglis is in red-hot form, has his game in order and will throw something different and dynamic at the Proteas’ biggest threats.