When selectors have chosen very young players in the recent past they have most often been right. Ellyse Perry was 17 when she played her first Test. Pat Cummins was 18. Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh 20. Steve Smith was 21. Some were in and out of the team – Waugh for 18 months – but they were and are the cricketers of their time. Ponting and Waugh played 168 Tests each – more than any other Australian.
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Go back a little further, as Greg Chappell reminded us in the Herald on Wednesday, and you’ll find Neil Harvey, who dazzled in England during the 1948 Ashes while a teenager, and Doug Walters, who scored centuries in each of his first two Tests as a 19-year-old.
Konstas looks every bit the cricketer of his generation. But every innings is not going to be as breathtaking as his Test debut. Five days ago, in his last match for the Sydney Thunder, he was out for a duck.
Konstas did get to play at Hurstville Oval, for St George’s second-grade team, at age 16. His time at St George, before he transferred to Sutherland, included a century on the famous ground.
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