Even within dressing rooms he now increasingly occupies as a senior figure, Matthew Renshaw is often reminded of a typecast he remains eager to prove outdated.
In 2016, the fresh-faced left-hander was introduced ahead of his Test debut as the ‘Turtle’. The nickname was foisted on the 20-year-old due to his shyness around senior members of the Australian side. But, among the cricket public, a different interpretation filtered down.
For instance: Callum Vidler, barely a teenager when Renshaw subsequently made entreaties into the Big Bash after his initial run in the Test team fizzled out in 2017, sent a Snapchat to a friend expressing his disbelief when he saw this apparent old-school Test opener now attempting to clear the pickets.
“For some reason he screen-shotted it,” Renshaw says of Vidler’s picture-message that is saved on the young speedster’s phone. “He was like, ‘Look what 13-year-old ‘Vids’ thought of you’.”
First impressions count, as Renshaw has learnt over almost a decade since his first coming as an international cricketer.
In his maiden Test, a meticulous 34no from 137 balls that steered Australia to their first victory in six Tests coloured the public’s view of him. Never mind the fact his maiden ton a month later came off 201 balls – a perfectly reasonable pace; earlier in the day, his opening partner, David Warner, scored a ton inside a session. After 10 Tests, Renshaw’s strike-rate stood at 43.78, marginally below that of Matthew Hayden (46.66) – the man with whom he was regularly compared and once the scourge of opening bowlers the world over – at the same juncture of his career.
Still, Renshaw admits 20-year-old Matthew Renshaw could not have projected that 30-year-old Matthew Renshaw’s international prospects would be more immediately brighter in white-ball cricket than in red.
“I probably wouldn’t have believed it,” he tells cricket.com.au. “When you play at 20, you play a certain style and you get pigeonholed in that style. It took a fair bit of work for me to get out of that pigeonhole.
“To be fair, so many people thought that style wouldn’t work (in limited-overs cricket). I knew I had the ability (to score faster), but it was about using it when I needed to. I think I’m a way better player now than I was back then. But now it’s like, how can I use that as well as I can?”
Renshaw will arrive in Islamabad this week as the only specialist bat outside captain Mitch Marsh picked in all three squads for the Pakistan and Bangladesh matches across both the ODI and T20I arenas.
Considering the retirements of Smith, David Warner, Marcus Stoinis and Glenn Maxwell from Australia’s world champion ODI outfit and the underperformance of the T20I side at the past three World Cups, Renshaw presents as an intriguing figure in Australia’s medium-term limited-overs future.
In fact, either side of the Ashes series he was overlooked for last summer, Renshaw quietly had his best performances in an Australian shirt since those early days in the Test side.
After averaging 53 in his debut ODI series at home to India in November, he top-scored with a 44-ball 65 in the shock defeat to Zimbabwe at the T20 World Cup in February. He was dropped for the next match against Sri Lanka, which the Aussies also lost to confirm their group-stage exit. As Australia took stock of their doomed campaign, he left the island as arguably the only player with his reputation enhanced.
That some believed Renshaw’s skilled middle-order approach could have complemented Australia’s powerful T20I batting contingent in that defeat to Sri Lanka highlighted how far his white-ball game has come.
His improved short-form standing been noted elsewhere too. Renshaw signed on for a maiden domestic T20 opportunity abroad – in the Pakistan Super League – before ultimately opting to skip the tournament to stay fresh for international opportunities he hopes will materialise this year.
Renshaw has also used the recent break to fix a long-standing issue related to his nasal septum, stemming from a childhood injury sustained when he top-edged a ball into his face playing backyard cricket. The cartilage subsequently re-formed in a way that has made breathing through his nose difficult as an adult.
The problem was exacerbated by his allergy to grass – an irony not lost on Renshaw given his occupation and enthusiasm for lawn care at his Brisbane home.
All of which had conspired to make recovery from running between the wickets in Colombo’s stifling humidity even more challenging. “In those hot conditions, especially when your heart rate’s going and you’re trying to calm down, nose breathing is how you calm yourself,” he says.
On the advice of a specialist, Renshaw underwent a septorhinoplasty last month – essentially a nose job – which involved a surgeon breaking his nose again and replacing cartilage in the hope of stabilising the organ.
Renshaw is now breathing easier. “This might not be a genuine fix,” he says, “but it’s a step and if it helps me five per cent, then that’s all I can really ask for.”
The timing of the procedure meant he will be fully fit come the first ODI in Rawalpindi. It will also give him the best chance of fulfilling an overarching ambition to re-establish himself in the Baggy Green.
Renshaw is not immune to the universal struggle faced by modern batters navigating the widening gap between the formats’ divergent demands. Indeed, having returned to the Shield in March on the back his first taste of T20 International cricket, he failed to pass 31 in four innings. In 11 first-class games prior to that, he had scored five hundreds.
It is no surprise to learn that hitting a six off Blessing Muzarabani in the penultimate over of a T20 run chase and surviving an over from Fergus O’Neill in the Sheffield Shield require fundamentally different batting mechanics.
But Renshaw insists there’s a world in which the skills are complementary. “That’s what I’m trying to bring into my red-ball game, ” he says. “The one-day side of like, ‘How can I adjust things and change the way that people are bowling to me?’
“In one-day cricket, you can just step across and flick one for one and you’re off strike. In Shield cricket, they’re bowling six balls at the top of off. You know where the ball is going to be. But that almost makes it harder, because they’re trying to attack you. In one-day and T20, you’re attacking them and they’re trying to defend.
“So it’s like trying to play (red-ball cricket more) like a chess game as much as you can. It’s like, ‘If I do this to Ferg (O’Neill)’, he’s gonna do this.
“With the way the pitches and the balls are, you’re going to have a ball with your name on it. I’ve seen so many people come in and try and block the ball, get five off 60 and not move anywhere in the game. It gets easier once you start scoring runs.”
It raises the obvious example of Australia’s only real current three-format batting master, Travis Head, whose journey has been somewhat intertwined with Renshaw’s.
In 2018, when Renshaw’s Test career looked certain to be revived on Australia’s first post-Sandpapergate series, Head was instead one of the new batters picked to face Pakistan in Dubai.
Five years on in Nagpur, their roles were reversed when Head was controversially dropped for Renshaw for the opening Test of the 2023 India tour, with selectors perceiving the latter’s skill against spin to trump the former’s.
More recently, it was Head’s astonishing 629-run franking of a chance promotion to open the batting against England last summer that was partially the reason Renshaw was shut out of a first Ashes appearance.
During that series, Renshaw, like most observers, thought the Head opening experiment would last one Test. It was perhaps his own lesson that there are occasions when his peers can also fall victim to ‘pigeonholing’.
“Trav and I spoke about this in Sri Lanka,” he says. “The way that he plays so fearlessly, I’m jealous of, because I wish I could do that. I wish I could go out and open the batting and just … smack them.”
Head’s success in an Ashes is a further source of Renshaw’s envy; the series between his birth country and the one he moved to when he was 10 remains “the pinnacle of everything”.
Renshaw’s British roots are real. Born in Middlesborough, he recalls watching his father Ian open the batting with Joe Root’s father Matt for Sheffield Collegiate and playing with the future England captain on the outfields of Yorkshire club grounds. Separately, Liam Plunkett once babysat him. Those links, combined with the agony of several near misses on an Ashes debut, have only added to his desire to face England.
While he carried the drinks during the 2023 Ashes tour, Renshaw was perhaps closest to facing the old enemy in 2017-18 before a Shield form slump on the back of a middling tour of Bangladesh cruelly saw him dropped on the eve of the series. It proved the first of several career setbacks he believes he now handles better than he once did.
“It feels like I’ve never really cemented my spot in anything,” he says. “Even on that Bangladesh tour (in 2017) I felt like I should be there, but there’s that little (voice) on your shoulder, going, ‘You shouldn’t be there, you’ve done nothing’.
“It’s just about calming down that (voice) as much as you can and going, ‘Well, if it doesn’t happen, what’s the worst that’s going to happen?’
“The 2017-18 one was a really big one where I was like: ‘I have to play an Ashes Test’. It was like: ‘Everything’s leading up to this’. I got in my own head … you just get all these negative thoughts.
“Whereas (now) I look towards that (2027) Ashes series, I’m like: ‘That would be amazing to play’. I’ve been a part of a squad now, and I’ve been on the field at Lord’s (in 2023), taken a catch. I’ve done it – but I haven’t done it.
“Once you get the emotion out of the decision and start thinking practically – which is hard to do as an athlete where there’s a lot of emotions around results – it’s way easier to move on and go forward, rather than thinking, ‘This is bullshit’, because you’re never going to get anywhere if you keep thinking things are bullshit.”
With at least 20 Tests to be played in a 12-month block beginning August, plus the marquee ODI World Cup to come on the back of that, Renshaw knows he could conceivably be a key figure in all of it – or none of it.
“I could leave and then not come back for two months,” says Renshaw, who has two daughters with his wife Josie. “Or I could come back in a month – I don’t know.
“It’s sort of a waiting game on selections. You come to learn that you can’t predict anything in this game – which annoys my wife. She wants to be planned, wants to know that we’re doing this, this and this. I’m like, ‘I won’t know until they pick the teams’.
“I never thought I’d play in a World Cup. To be able to say I played at a T20 World Cup, made fifty in a game, that’s amazing when, probably six months ago, I was never going to play a T20 for Australia in my head.
“You don’t know how quickly things can change, so just sort of hang on for the ride and see what happens.”
Qantas Tour of Pakistan & Bangladesh 2026
Australia squad for Pakistan ODIs: Mitchell Marsh (c), Alex Carey, Nathan Ellis, Cameron Green, Josh Inglis, Matthew Kuhnemann, Marnus Labuschagne, Riley Meredith, Oliver Peake, Matthew Renshaw, Tanveer Sangha, Liam Scott, Matt Short, Billy Stanlake, Adam Zampa
May 30: First ODI, Rawalpindi Stadium, 9:30pm AEST
June 2: Second ODI, Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore, 9:30pm AEST
June 4: Third ODI, Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore, 9:30pm AEST
Australia squad for Bangladesh ODIs: Mitchell Marsh (c), Xavier Bartlett, Alex Carey, Cooper Connolly, Ben Dwarshuis, Nathan Ellis, Cameron Green, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Matthew Kuhnemann, Marnus Labuschagne, Matthew Renshaw, Tanveer Sangha, Liam Scott, Adam Zampa
June 9: First ODI, Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium, Dhaka, 3pm AEST
June 11: Second ODI, Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium, Dhaka, 3pm AEST
June 14: Third ODI, Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium, Dhaka, 3pm AEST
Australia squad for Bangladesh T20Is: Mitchell Marsh (c), Xavier Bartlett, Cooper Connolly, Tim David, Joel Davies, Nathan Ellis, Cameron Green, Aaron Hardie, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Spencer Johnson, Matthew Kuhnemann, Riley Meredith, Josh Philippe, Matthew Renshaw, Adam Zampa
June 17: First T20I, Bir Sreshtho Flight Lieutenant Matiur Rahman Stadium, Chattogram, 6pm AEST
June 19: Second T20I, Bir Sreshtho Flight Lieutenant Matiur Rahman Stadium, Chattogram, 6pm AEST
June 21: Third T20I, Bir Sreshtho Flight Lieutenant Matiur Rahman Stadium, Chattogram, 6pm AEST
All matches exclusive on Kayo Sports and Fox Cricket
