James – good call on Jaques.

And I totally agree on Clarke. His back problems have rendered him a stodgy accumulator (albeit one that plays spinners well), which is great in the longer form of the game but limits his output in one-dayers.

The supposed one-day heavyweights like MClarke scratch around and bat for themselves. He went in at 3 solely to get a bit of match practice, which he or someone deemed more important than helping the team. On a flat wicket, NSW’s scoring rate was too slow.

When Smith and O’Keefe, two young guns briefly batted together, they put on 43 in 20 balls. The big names couldn’t manage that and the only one that scored relatively freely was Katich, who should be opening in the one-dayers. Jaques looked in pretty good form too and I would have him opening in the first test team, ahead of Hughes.

Clarke is no one-day or T20 batsman any more and the sooner the selectors realise this the better. The grooming of him as T20 skipper is absurd and illogical; he doesn’t understand the tactics and with his slow scoring he shouldn’t be in the team in the first place.

Steve Smith has been awesome this season and is a more than handy leggie. As tempting as it might be to push him along too fast, I hope they let him play Shield cricket for the next two years, so he can be more match hardened when he inevitably comes into the test team. The T20 games on the other hand are different and I’d pick him and Henriques in the Aussie T20 team ahead of MHussey, Clarke and Hopes.

You have to pick horses for courses and the selectors still have not realised this.

By the way Tassie were hardly inexperienced – Dighton, Bailey, Cowan, Birt, Butterworth, Geeves and Krejza are hardened domestic cricketers.