Shaun Marsh has been added to Australia's squad for the first Test, which will begin in Adelaide on Tuesday. Australia's cricketers were due to assemble in Adelaide on Thursday afternoon, after Wednesday's emotional farewell for their team-mate Phillip Hughes at a funeral in Macksville.
Marsh's inclusion comes as uncertainty surrounds the fitness of captain Michael Clarke, whose hamstring injury had been likely to rule him out of the first Test when it was due to be played at the Gabba. The revised fixture means the season now starts five days later, but naturally Clarke has been unable to complete his recovery programme over the past week.
On Friday, the Australians will train as a group for the first time since the death of Hughes, who was struck by a bouncer during a Sheffield Shield match at the SCG last Tuesday. Hughes was on 63 not out at the time and would have been a strong contender to be called in as cover for Clarke for the Gabba Test.
On the same day, Marsh scored an unbeaten 134 for Western Australia against Victoria at the MCG, his second hundred from four matches this Shield season. He made 111 at the WACA against Queensland in the second game of the summer, and now has a chance of playing his first Test since the tour of South Africa in February this year.
The inclusion of Marsh brings Australia's Test squad to 13 members for the Adelaide match. It remains to be seen whether all of the players will feel ready for five days of Test cricket by next Tuesday, so soon after farewelling Hughes, and the coach Darren Lehmann said he would understand if any player chose to withdraw from the Test against India.
"I was there 10 years ago when my close friend David Hookes was killed in a tragic incident," Lehmann wrote in a column in the Australian on Thursday. "It's something I think about every day of my life. Phillip's death has revived a lot of memories of that time. Both were freakish incidents. I guess the Hookes family have had a hard week, too.
"Hookesy's death brought it home to me that life has to be joyful and sport the same. We are only playing a game after all. Our existence is too fragile and lifespan too short to worry about stuff that doesn't matter. I think I played cricket about seven or 10 days after Hookesy died. It was something I felt I had to do and it was something I wanted to do, but that was me.
"We hope the boys can find the inner strength to play the game in the way Phillip would have wanted in Adelaide next week and that they can honour what he had done. We want to hold his values close to our heart and that means playing cricket the way he did, with a love of the game and a smile.
"It's going to be hard and if somebody is struggling Michael and I understand. There is no pressure on them. We will look after them and we will help them get back to the place where they can play. We left a bit of heart in Macksville yesterday."
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