'A great opportunity': Andrew McDonald dangles selection carrot in front of Aussie Test hopefuls ahead of Ashes

Australia coach Andrew McDonald has encouraged Test hopefuls to stake their claim for Ashes selection in the early rounds of the Sheffield Shield season and in Australia A matches, as the team's batting woes continue.

With all eyes starting to turn to the home Ashes series later in the year and instability still plaguing Australia's top order following David Warner's retirement, domestic batters are vying for a place at the selection table.

Sheffield Shield and Australia A matches have historically been the primary pathway to Test cricket for Aussie hopefuls.

READ MORE: Joey reveals blueprint to let Latrell loose in decider

READ MORE: Demon's admission after being dismantled by Djoker

READ MORE: Selfless captain refuses to break Lara's Test record

Speaking ahead of the third and final Test against the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica — in which the struggles of Sam Konstas and Usman Khawaja are raising selection questions — McDonald called on domestic batters to play their way into the Ashes team.

"There's [a] great opportunity in domestic cricket at the start of the season, and there always is leading into any Test series," he said.

"We saw with the Border-Gavaskar Trophy last year, there was an opportunity for players to put their hand up there.

"There's also Australia A [against Sri Lanka A] in [Darwin] at the moment, so we're watching that closely… it's really about the opportunity that presents."

However, McDonald also voiced his confidence in the players already in the national squad.

"First and foremost, we concentrate on what's right here, right now," he said.

"Everyone will be speculating around who can come in, what possibilities are, but we're confident the players that we've got here can do the job."

With this in mind, McDonald conceded that it may not be possible to draw correlations between Australia's current tour of the West Indies and the summer Ashes series.

"There's been a lot of variable bounce and sideways movement, so it's probably not similar to Australia," he said.

"Maybe some surfaces will be. I think Perth potentially, when it does crack a little bit, it can go up and down and a little bit sideways.

"But I think the first four rounds of Shield cricket will draw a better connection to the Ashes than what we're seeing here.

"What we are seeing here, though, is people getting exposed at Test level, and within that exposure, the mental challenges of Test cricket are real."

Currently, there is not a strong pipeline of in-form or emerging top-order talent in Australian cricket banging down the selection door.

However, McDonald highlighted the team's ability to compensate for its shortcomings in different parts of the order.

"For every failure in the top-order, the middle-order's been able to get us out of those situations and vice versa," he said.

"We've had times when the top-order's prospered and the middle potentially hasn't delivered what you'd probably expect.

"Ultimately, the game of cricket is matching the bowling with the batting. At the moment, we're doing that. We're finding ways through it.

"Would we like to have greater output from the top-order? There's no doubt about that, and those players would want more runs. But they'll come.

"We've been able to find a way through the West Indies batting order…and they've been quite big victories."

Young batter Konstas produced disappointing scores of 3 and 5 in the first Test and 25 and 0 in the second.

Despite the poor results, McDonald saw Konstas take a "small step forward" in the first innings of the second Test.

"Four games in — eight innings — it's probably early for anyone to judge, really," he said regarding Konstas' early Test career.

Konstas will likely feature in the two four-day matches on the Australia A tour of India in late September. Afterwards, he would be available for the start of the Sheffield Shield season in early October, with four rounds expected before the Ashes series begins.

The home Ashes series is scheduled from November 2025 to January 2026.