In cricket, some numbers are more than just numbers. No. 3 is one of them.
Coming in right after the openers, a No. 3 batsman faces the new ball, and if the first wicket falls early, the weight of the innings lands on their shoulders. In that position, a batsman must sometimes weather the storm with patience, and at other times set the tempo by scoring quickly. Legends like Don Bradman, Viv Richards, Ricky Ponting, Rahul Dravid and Kumar Sangakkara have all shown just how important the one-down, or No. 3, position really is.
That importance still holds. Looking at No. 3 batsmen’s Test performances over the past three years, one interesting fact stands out: Bangladesh’s Mominul Haque seems to have made the number 3 his own. Among batsmen who have batted at No. 3 over the past three years, he ranks exactly third in runs. Above him are only England’s Ollie Pope and New Zealand’s Kane Williamson.
From September 2023 to now, Mominul has batted at No. 3 in 26 innings across 15 Tests. He has scored 979 runs at an average of 40.79, with one century and eight fifties — meaning he has crossed 50 in nine of his 26 innings. Of the two batsmen who have done better than him, Pope has scored 1,369 runs in 38 innings with five centuries and three fifties, while Williamson has scored 1,360 runs in 30 innings with five centuries and two fifties. In terms of crossing the 50-run mark, Mominul is actually ahead of both. But he falls behind in converting most of those fifties into centuries.
The reason for this look at the state of the No. 3 position is Marnus Labuschagne. The batsman who has long held down Australia’s No. 3 spot has been struggling for some time. Over the past three years, his average in 43 innings is just 24.69. Among 56 batsmen who have played at least 20 innings, only three have a worse average than his — and two of them have since retired.
Among the top 10 batsmen who have batted at No. 3 over these three years, Labuschagne is the only one without a single century. In the most recent series against Bangladesh, for instance, he was dismissed for 1, 31 and 4 runs across three innings. Watching Labuschagne struggle like this, Ricky Ponting has said outright that Australia should now look for someone else to bat at No. 3.
In the end, though, the selectors did not go down that road. Australia are heading to South Africa for a three-Test tour, and Labuschagne has been kept in the squad for it. This will be Australia’s first tour of South Africa since the infamous “sandpaper” scandal of 2018. Selectors were unwilling to risk handing the sharpness and weight the No. 3 position demands to someone entirely new. That’s the No. 3 position for you.