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It’s more than three years since Peter Siddle played a one day international for Australia. It’s been two years for Ryan Harris.
Nathan Lyon has played in just two in total. All three of these Test bowlers have clearly been branded Test specialists by the national selection panel.
The question is why?
The only current Test bowler who’s consistently played one-dayers over that period is Mitchell Johnson, and you can largely put that down to the fact he has only played in around half of Australia’s Tests in the past few seasons.
Compare these numbers to the previous generation of quicks.
Glenn McGrath played in 250 ODIs throughout his career, culminating in a World Cup swansong in 2007 at the age of 37. Brett Lee played in all formats of the game until he was 34.
Even Jason Gillespie, who spent a lot of time on the sidelines through injury, managed to eke out almost 100 ODIs for Australia, including as a member of the World Cup squad in 2003.
Big time tournaments require big name players.
Is there a legitimate reason for this demarcation in bowling selection other than player workload management?
By all means, Ryan Harris needs to be managed carefully given his dodgy knees and track record of injury, but it’s hard to imagine a handful of 10 over spells in the space of two weeks would be significantly detrimental.
Moreover, Harris needs to stay match fit with a tough three Test tour in South Africa on the horizon and the Sydney Test having finished almost two weeks ago.
As for the continual selection of Xavier Doherty over Lyon for the spinning role – I’m as confused as Ronan O’Connell.
Or is resting star bowlers simply an indication of how unserious one day games are being viewed by administrators? If so, how much longer can this format be sustained?
One dayers are seemingly in no man’s land right now – not robust enough for the purist, and not frenetic enough for the new age fan.
Test cricket is the unquestioned pinnacle of the sport, but plenty of Test stars have been equally effective in the shorter formats over the years.
At the same time it does make sense to expose younger bowlers to international cricket via the shorter formats, especially in so called ‘meaningless series’. That doesn’t mean the senior quicks need to be benched entirely though.
Incidentally, it seems any ODI match not part of the World Cup or Champions Trophy is labelled ‘meaningless’, perhaps reflecting the public’s cold attitude towards cricket’s ‘middle child’ right now.
However, with the 2015 World Cup just around the corner and on home soil, it makes sense to have the best bowlers in contention for a selection berth.
There’s a big difference between being ‘rotated’ in and out of the side and being overlooked altogether, which appears to be the cards handed to Siddle and Harris.
We’re all too aware of how quickly our fast bowling stocks can be depleted, so it makes sense our best bowlers have their short-form skills finely tuned should they be required.
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