The four-part second season will be available on Amazon’s Prime Video from early next year and includes a 4-0 defeat to England, with Australia retaining the Ashes last summer.
All of the above takes place at a ‘hard time for leadership in the Australian men’s cricket team’, set against the backdrop of Tim Paine’s resignation as captain and the acrimonious departure of Justin Langer.
A trailer released Tuesday by Amazon Prime Video opens with a clip narrated by Michelle Marsh.
“We don’t own the Baggy Green,” he says.
‘We understand the privilege of wearing Baggy Green.’
The trailer includes footage of Travis Head slamming his bat in the locker room after being dismissed for the throat, while David Warner angrily slams a fridge door in the same Test.
Australia won the first Test in Galle by 10 wickets, but suffered a disastrous innings defeat in the second match at the same venue.
Meanwhile, Nathan Lyon has termed one of the Tests against Pakistan as the ‘worst I have ever played’.
High-scoring draws in Rawalpindi and Karachi – where Pakistan batted 171 overs to save the match – were followed by a 115-run victory in Lahore, as Australia won a Test series in Asia for the first time in 11 years.
England’s defeat in the Ashes is also prominent and the trailer released on Tuesday has visuals of Mitchell Starc dismissing Rory Burns on the first ball of the series.
The short clip featured Travis Head scoring a 85-ball century at The Gabba and Scott Boland taking six for just seven in his first innings in the second innings of the Boxing Day Test.
Usman Khwaja, meanwhile, describes the challenges of playing for Australia and can be seen celebrating his back-to-back centuries at the Sydney Cricket Ground in the fourth Test.
Lion is again given the role of chief cheerleader as the Aussies celebrate their Ashes victory by drinking beer from a glass urn which is now given to the winners in the form of trophies.
Marsh also closes out the narration in the trailer, outlining the theme of the second season.
‘We have a direction we want to go,’ he says.
‘Like, this is Pat’s [Cummins] team. And this is our team.
Langer and Paine, who both featured prominently in the first series of The Test, are conspicuous by their absence in the second season.
Langer coached Australia to T20 World Cup glory and Ashes glory only to resign less than a month after Australia retained the urn.
The former Australian opener left his role in February after he was not offered a long-term deal, with Cricket Australia only being offered a contract to keep him in charge until the end of the 2022 T20 World Cup.
His position was the subject of debate since the summer of 2021, when Australia lost a Test series at home against India and reports of dissatisfaction with his methods began to emerge.
Speaking to NewsCorp, Langer’s agent James Henderson said the former Australia coach had decided not to add his voice to the second series of Tests.
“We understood that this documentary is about players and their stories,” he said. ‘On that basis, it was an easy decision for Justin to respect it and not get involved.’
Meanwhile, Paine stepped down from his role as captain in November last year after the 2017 sexting scandal with Cricket Tasmania employee Renee Ferguson became public.
Prime Video Australia’s head of content Tyler Byrne said “the start of the second season was an obvious choice” following the success of the first eight-episode series, which reshaped Australia’s Test team after the ball-tampering scandal.
Richard Ostroff, Head of Broadcast and Production at Cricket Australia, said: ‘Following the success of season one, we knew the bar was set high. […] During the ups and downs of the last 12 months, the players displayed outstanding leadership and dedication to make our country proud.’