The Sunday Telegraph, in another serve on Andrew Hilditch, notes that the chairman of selectors for the Australian Cricket team is on a salary of $100,000. Nice work if you can get it.
And the week before, when Matthew Hayden was going out to bat in the fateful Third Test at the SCG, the Sunday Telegraph revealed, with a photo, that Hilditch had been walking his dog on a beach in South Australia at the time.
The selection panel is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons, the main one being that it has made mistakes of omission and commission in the discharge of it duties.
There is a strong case for Cricket Australia to get off its complacent seat of power and make some hard-headed and sensible choices about the selection panel.
The new chairman and at least three changes in the panel, leaving David Boon as the only re-appointed incumbent, is what is needed.
The chairman clearly cannot treat the job as a virtual full-time occupation, as it needs to be. He has a successful law practice in Adelaide (which is a sign of his competency as a lawyer). But he does not seem to have the time to see many of the Tests overseas.
The duty selector on many overseas tours is Merv Hughes, who is also leading a tour party at the same time. He has been advertising his tour party to South Africa with a co-leader, Kerry O’Keefe.
This raises the important issue of whether a duty selector should be tied down during a Test with the interests and needs of the many people on his tour.
Or should be be devoting his main energies to acting with the captain and the coach to work out tactics, strategies and team selections? It’s pretty obvious what the answer to this question should be.
A third selector Jamie Cox is also the high performance manager of South Australian cricket. There is a clear conflict of interest issue here, as well as the consideration of whether this job gives him sufficient time to cover all the cricket played throughout Australia during the season looking up up and coming talent.
One of my favourites as a great talent for Australia in the near future, if the selectors had the gumption or nous to give him a chance, is Steve Smith. On Saturday in Sydney grade cricket playing for Sutherland against Randwick-Petersham (and captaining the side) he took 3 for 62 off 16 overs and then smashed 115, a six and 17 fours off 135 balls.
You’d like to think that in the search for a wrist spinner and batsman one of the Australian selectors might have wandered down to the ground to have a look.
But, of course, there is a geographical imbalance on the current panel. There are two selectors who live in South Australia (Hilditch and Cox), a Victorian (Hughes), and a Tasmanian (Boon).
NSW, WA and Queensland are not represented, despite the fact that these three states have been the strongest states in terms of producing great players over the decades.
Can we expect Cricket Australia to rectify this situation and ensure that it gets value for money from its selectors?
On the evidence of Cricket Australia renewing coach Tim Nielsen’s contract for another two years, despite some woeful strategic and tactical decisions made by the Australian team in the past year, the answer is probably no to this question.
If the Test side, particularly, does poorly in South Africa and England, there will be pressure on Cricket Australia to start expecting the same high level of performance from its coaches and selectors as the public expects and demands from the team itself.
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