I agree with Border but Waugh and Taylor had sides at their disposal with a massive disparity between them and the opposition talent wise.

Neither won in India either.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/sport/cricket/turn-for-the-worse/2009/10/21/1255891860594.html

“……THE extent of the decline of slow bowling in Australia has been revealed, with figures showing the percentage of deliveries sent down by spinners in the Sheffield Shield competition has almost halved in the past four decades.

The figures were prepared for Cricket Australia and presented to the board’s annual general meeting last week, at which chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch was reappointed for two years, despite the recent Ashes defeat.

Hilditch and his panel have been criticised for sending five spinners through a revolving door to the Test team since Stuart MacGill retired in June last year. But in his report to the AGM, Hilditch said the selectors were placed in the impossible position of having to pluck a spinner, Nathan Hauritz, out of grade ranks for last summer’s Adelaide Test because of the dearth of slow bowlers in first-class cricket……..”

(The word objective here is important. There was a lot of emotion at the time about Mark Taylor, who only debatably had come out of his dreadful form slump on the 1997 tour of England. But Bernard correctly reported that although Tubby had only made 30, he had batted well against a useful Victorian attack and was worth his place in the Australian side. Taylor backed this up over the following two years.)

I can go even further than this. Judging by Bernard’s comments in response to Hohns, one did not even need to be present to watch the cricket in order to be a selector. Qld were something like 1-400 against NZ, with Love and Hayden to the fore. So Hohns’s report to his fellow selector that Love and Hayden were batting well was hardly rocket science – one glance at a scorecard was enough to know that!

That’s the point of this comment: that most good selection work in cricket is not rocket science. I believe this shone through in the exemplary work of Hohns over many seasons: almost without exception he picked the guys who scored runs heavily year after year. In other words, these correct decisions could have been made just by looking at scorebooks.

In many ways the problem of the current panel is that they have tried to get pretty, and they have selected quite a lot of players on the basis of limited visual impression rather than on weight of statistics. In rare cases like Callum Ferguson this has worked. In a case like Jason Krejza it worked for 1 test, then it failed for 1 test (and only the selectors know why they chose to do 2 tests rather than 0 or a lot). In a case like Adam Voges we still have no idea why he gets selected.

1) We never saw Taylor let a game slip because he had the best spinner of all time at his disposal. Waugh had the same, though for the latter part of his captaincy, said spinner was on the decline whose flipper and wrong-un were things of the past (whereas Ponting got the dregs left at the bottom of Warne’s leg spin barrell). Recall that waugh kept throwing the ball to warnie hoping to get Lara out when he amassed 150-odd and led a 4th wicket chase of 320-ish to win in 1999. No innovation there, no insight, just “keep giving the ball to warnie”. I’m aware we retained the trophy, but it wasn’t due to cleverness or innovation.

2) Has ricky pointing ever _said_ that he threw the ball to clarke because he thought the game was over? I’ve certainly never heard him say it. You say it was luck, I say it was ‘innovation’.

3) There were some better sides in the early nineties, some were worse, some roughly the same. England were no better then than they are now, and australia had no 5-0 ashes wins. Most importanly, Australia were much, much better then. McGrath was at his best, ditto warnie. Warne had drift and flight, and had flippers and wrong-uns. The back up bowling was better who, most importantly, could maintain the pressure whilst adding variety. Gillespie was fierce, Kaspa was solid. Then there’s the much more reliable batting; if by some fluke the bowling didn’t do the job, they had Slater, Langer, Ponting, Waugh, Waugh to fall back on (I’ve left Taylor out because in the latter part of his career, Taylor’s batting was rubbish; it was lucky the rest of the batting was good enough that they could afford to carry him ).

4) You toured with the teams a few times? Big deal. Unless you were on the pitch then your _opinion_ is no more qualified than that of any other fan. I’ve played the game at grade level, I’m a member of the Adelaide Oval and I’ve spent time with the side in England and Australia; which makes me just another cricket fan (like you).

I have long been a critic of Ponting as a Test captain because he just lets things drift when the bowlers are struggling.

1st Ashes Test – on a slow pitch and struggling to take the last cpla wickets – he refused to bowl a wrist spinner (Katich) or a quick. I know he was trying to get in more overs but all we needed was one wicket.

Acrimonious SCG Test v India – he only gave Clarke the ball because he thought the game was over and a draw – again a bowler taking the ball away from the batsman, something out of left field.

You rarely ever saw Taylor letting a game slip due to low intelligence or NFI.

And the reason Border, Taylor and Waugh had inferior win-loss records is that the opposition were much better in those days compared to us.

Go back to the mid 80s, 90s and compare the West Indies and Pakistan sides with their great fast bowlers.
Our lineup of the naughties would have struggled to make 300 v Ambrose, Holding, Marshall in their prime or for that matter Wasim, Waqar, Abdul Qadir in their prime.

Yes, Australia has been blessed with 15 years of great Test cricket under Taylor, Waugh and Ponting but I rate them very clearly in that order for captaincy and on-field intelligence – and I toured with the team a few times.

I think you are over playing what is a pretty simple gig. Merv Hughes doesn’t come across as a Rhodes Scholar to me.

Finding excuses and apportioning blame hints at a weak national pysche. Having said that,as suggested by myself and reiterated by Freud,selectors should be paid more and should be full time and then we can hold them accountable. Pay them $250000 at least(that is each) and you will see the professionalism come in.

Dropping one of the most feared bowling attacks of all time to put in a pace bowler who had ups and downs early in his career would have been met with a colossal backlash.

Also you say it si easy to captain with a quality side and yet refer to Waugh as a captain we were spoilt to have? Either one or the other is incorrect.

Waugh’s legacy as captain is one of the most overstated pieces of cricket history. He had a side which was littered with all time greats and yet ponting, with the same side yet with many players past their prime, got better results.

I fail to see what evidence there is to suggest Waugh would have done something about it? What would eh have done – jump in a time machine and reassemble his team of all time greats.

Yes Warne was a better option for captaincy, but he was also a better option than Steve Waugh. (who he didn’t rate as a captain)

Of course I’m just playing devil’s advocate here. I believe as strongly as anyone that Hilditch should get the sack, and I’ve been arguing this for at least a year now. This makes the point that it’s not one catastrophic error (as at The Oval) that is the problem with Hilditch, but rather his whole body of work: he makes mistake after mistake.

What The Oval serves to illustrate is that it’s not Hilditch alone that is the problem: there need to be multiple sackings on the panel, possibly the whole lot of them.

As I said, he didn’t have to captain the side he inherited from Steve Waugh, god I could have done it and Australia could have played with 10 men and still clean-swept the Ashes. McGrath was the most consistent bowler probably of all time, Brett Lee with his pace you didn’t need to do a lot but put some catching men in place, Warne and MacGill had all of their fields determined in advance. The “backup” bowlers of Gillespie, Bichel and Kasprowicz would have been first choice for any other country in any other era. All Ponting had to do was stand at second slip and watch the old-heads win matches for him, he didn’t even have to throw anyone the ball, they more-or-less sorted it out themselves.

It’s easy to captain a great team, it’s not easy to captain a team going through a transition phase and I think Ponting has been found out.

As for the World Cup’s, well the first he had an amazingly good side. I mean look at the scorecard for the final, 4 players had a bat (including Ponting) and India were NEVER going to make 359. The last WC they won by default, there was no-one else who was even really competitive.

Regardless of bad decisions and key moments that perhaps lost the Ashes in both the last English series, Steve Waugh was the type of captain who would have done something about it. His best innings were when Australia were on the ropes, indeed one of his 3 ODI tons was against SAF in the WC, he came in at 3-48 and SAF were all-over the Aussies, he ground out 120* and Australia won with two balls remaining and won the WC.

Thats what a great captain does, they take wickets when they need them most, they make runs when nobody else does. Warne took 40 wickets in the 2005 series and Ponting still lost the Ashes. In the last series he had Australia in a winning position in two tests that he didn’t win.

I’m a big fan of Ponting’s batting and I’m not a big fan of Steve Waugh (I was a Mark Waugh fan) but I don’t believe Ponting is of the right calibre to be Australian captain, it should have been given to Warne upon S Waugh’s retirement, regardless of his off-field idiocy as we’ve seen in the IPL and with Victoria on a few occasions, he was also excellent.

For the same reason – results – and obvious to 4 million NZ selectors – Henry and co should have got their marching orders after the All Blacks lost in the 2007 Rugby World Cup, because of their selection blunders and poor (conditioning and rotation) strategies. Results to date in 2009 confirm that. There is little to suggest they’re building a 2011 World Cup winning team either.

In both cases failure has been rewarded.

For those who like to look no deeper than the surface, ignoring things like the rare form of the 2005 england bowling attack (simon jones swinging the ball at will, harmisson in career best form, ditto flintoff), McGrath’s injury, brett lee smashing a ball to deep cover at edgebaston when we needed 4 to win – had he hit 5 yards either side the match was over, warnie dropping KP in the last test, some shocking umpire decisions; and the woeful performance of the australian attack in 2009, they _will_ see that ponting lost two ashes series as you suggest. Hopefully such people will inclined to look a little deeper. I’m aware that Border, Waugh and Taylor didn’t lose two ashes series. I’m also aware that none of them won an ashes series 5-0, nor did they go through a world cup campaign undefeated – something ricky did twice.

Regarding your comment “ponting should have ensured he wasn’t taking a totally inexperienced squad”, where exactly was he supposed to find these experienced front line bowlers? At this point, our stocks are bare, about which Ricky can do nothing. Agreed he stuck with Johnson when he was bowling poorly; I think he did so because when he hits his rhythm he’s a matchwinner. The only way he was going to get that rhythm was to keep bowling him. Maybe it’s worth re-igniting the debate about warm up matches.

As you say, ponting was given the greatest team of all time. He used that team to equal waugh’s record of consectutive test wins, go through world cups undefeated, and win an ashes series 5-0. We should be asking why Border, Waugh and Taylor didn’t measure up to Ricky.

“Exactly what is a captain supposed to do when his main strike weapon can’t even hit the pitch?” – Ponting should have ensured via the selectors that he wasn’t taking a totally inexpierenced squad to England for one, secondly when England’s tail wagged (which they did pretty regularly) he had no idea how to get them out, like a bull to a rag he just kept going and going expecting something to happen and not trying something different even for an over or two. How can that be anything other than a “lack of awareness of game situations”?

The same when he couldn’t get Monty Panesar out, I’m sorry but when you’ve got two part-timers trying to take an absolute bunny’s wicket then your captain is doing something wrong, yes it was getting dark but 10 years ago the Aussies would have bounced him out.

Ponting’s record speaks nothing of his captaincy. He was given the greatest team of all time, a well oiled machine and anyone could have lead them to victory. Don’t think it was Ponting telling McGrath to bowl line and length or Ponting setting Warne’s fields, this was done for him.

Obviously such a method is heavily reliant on statistics – and as such has a few problems. But it could certainly not produce a worse team than that which Hildich usually selects.

Someone famous once said “I don’t care if the President of the United States only works four hours a day, as long as he does his job well.” The same goes for Hilditch: I don’t care how hard he works – all that counts is that he carries out his job well. We all know his record in this respect.

2. “About the only historically significant moment in his Test match career (as a journeyman opening batsman) came in a Test against Pakistan when he obligingly picked up a ball that had been blocked by his partner, handed it back to the bowler and on appeal was given out. … This raises the issue of whether Hilditch is actually tough enough or ruthless enough, psychologically, to be a great selector.”

I’m actually debating with myself whether this is more significant than the other well-known thing about Hilditch as a test player, which is that he was a compulsive hooker even though it kept getting him out. While I agree fully with Spiro’s point about Hilditch not being tough enough (cf. Trevor Hohns, who made many hard but correct calls), it seems to me that the compulsive hooking is also very significant: Hilditch had a fatal flaw that either he could not see or else he could see but was incapable of remedying. Whichever it was it does not matter. I would suggest that he has fatal flaws as a selector too.

That said, one could argue that it’s more the responsibility of his employer, Cricket Australia, to see these flaws and take action.

Australia could lose its next two Test series against decent opponents and neither Hilditch nor Ponting will vacate their roles unless they choose to.

Fox said it all in 5 words – what really needs to be said after that?