Green has been part of the Australia training camp in Sydney over the last two days and is making steady progress, but the opening match of the series in Nagpur may come too soon. He is due to see the surgeon again on Monday which will mark a month since the injury occurred with the hope that he will be told the bone has healed.
“Building confidence is the main thing, setting him up to succeed in that first Test match, having enough time, that will be the critical question.”
“We value his batting first and foremost really, he’s a batter in our top six and we value that, his bowling is a bonus. A very nice bonus,” McDonald said.
“We see him [Handscomb] as an important right-hand option,” McDonald said. “We’ve got a lot of left handers. If there were to be any late changes, or Cameron Green doesn’t make that first Test, we feel we have some good options.”
Starc also suffered a finger injury at the MCG and is still bowling with protection at training, which he won’t be allowed to do in a match. He is almost back to top pace which McDonald termed as “staggering” although there remains a fixed time scale to his recovery. However, unlike Green he is able to get his workloads up at training.
“The guard needs to stay on. Really protecting against the knock that would then re-injure that ligament,” McDonald said. “That’s why it’s a clear cut deadline to mitigate against any of that risk.
“We can’t accelerate that to be honest. It’s probably frustrating for Mitch that he feels that good. But the good thing is when he does get out of the splint all his workloads are going to be up to speed and it will be pretty much into that second Test, which is good news to us.”
“I think any time a player expresses that at any point of time, that’s fair and reasonable,” he said. “If he’s feeling tired and fatigued, there’s an obvious reason for that.
“Our challenge will be to manage him into that first Test match, no different to any other series where you’ll have players come in at different stages in term of fatigue.”