Ashes speculation does not faze Matt Renshaw as he believes it is not the end-all and be-all for the opener.
‘I hide’ – Renshaw blocks out Ashes speculation.
In the impending Ashes series, a calm Matt Renshaw has put all considerations of starting the batting for Australia aside.
Renshaw claims that he is unaware of the rumours that he will be called up to the Test squad to play England.
“Obviously I want to be there, it would be remiss of me not to say that,” he told reporters in Adelaide on Wednesday. “But I try and stay away from it as much as possible.”
Renshaw, who made his ODI debut on Sunday with a score of 21 not out, had to Google the dates and locations of the games because he was so shocked to be called up to Australia’s squad for the ongoing ODI series against India.
Additionally, the 29-year-old has no idea how many runs the other candidates for Australia’s highly contested opening spot are scoring. A long cry from the 20-year-old Renshaw who made his Test debut in 2016, it’s a calculated strategy to clear his head.
“There’s been times in my career where I come off after a Shield game, and obviously all the Shield games are on at the same time, and you’re looking at the scorecard, you’re looking at different names, seeing how they went,” he said.
“Now, like the first Shield game [this season], I couldn’t tell you who scored runs in other games.
“Knowing that it doesn’t really matter in terms of someone else scoring runs, it doesn’t matter to how I’m going to go out and play my game.”
“A lot of the time you try and force a few things, you see someone else gets runs, and you go: ‘I need to score runs because then I’m going to be picked for Australia, then I’m going to become a good person’,” he said.
“That whole mentality when you’re young is that’s how you view yourself as a person.
“Whereas now I go home and I’ve got to change nappies, I’ve got to put kids to bed, I’ve got to try and calm screaming babies down.
“When you’re young, you go home, you have got nothing to do, so you’re just sitting on your phone scrolling.
“I hide. I don’t have the Cricket Australia app, I don’t try and look at any news, I hide all the cricket stuff on my Instagram so I don’t see it.”