User:TripleRoryFan/sandbox/Jon Holland with the Australian cricket team in South Africa in 2017–18

Jon Holland played for the Australian cricket team on their tour of South Africa in early 2018.

Background
Holland had only played two Test matches for Australia before the tour, both of them when he was a late call-up to join Australia's squad for a tour of Sri Lanka in 2016, brought into the side as a second spinner to replace the injured Steve O'Keefe. Australia was unsuccessful, losing the Test series 3-0, and Holland took only five wickets at an average of 54.80.

Holland did not represent Australia in any form of the game after that tour, and when he was overlooked to play for Australia in the fifth match of the 2017–18 Ashes series at the spinner-friendly Sydney Cricket Ground in favour of all-rounder Ashton Agar (who also did not play in the match), he acknowledged that he was unlikely to ever again play Test cricket for Australia. Despite being left out of the national team, Holland had great success in domestic cricket. In the 2016–17 Sheffield Shield season he took 50 wickets, including a 7/82 performance in the final, for which he was named the man of the match. Though he missed the start of the 2017–18 Sheffield Shield season due to injury, he still took 11 wickets at 18.64 in his two matches before the squad for the South Africa tour was announced.

Holland was a shock selection in Australia's squad for the South Africa tour. The rationale for his selection over Agar was that Australia was unlikely to need two spinners in a single match in South Africa, but if front-line spinner Nathan Lyon was unable to play they needed another specialist spinner rather than an all-rounder to replace him, implying that the selectors saw Holland as a better bowler than Agar.

In South Africa
For their tour match against South Africa A as Australia decided to use their best possible lineup as it was their only chance to prepare for the Test series, so Nathan Lyon played and left Jon Holland sidelined for the match.