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You would think the national selection panel of Rod Marsh, Mark Waugh, Darren Lehmann, and Trevor Hohns would pick the very best side to open a five-game ODI series against South Africa at the WACA tonight.
That being the case, how on earth can they drop Steve Smith?
With Australia’s batting so brittle, the one bloke you can count on not to go for the glory shots is the 25-year-old Smith.
Or have the selectors forgotten that in the last three-game ODI series against Pakistan on hard to score off wickets in the UAE, Smith was the man-of-the-series with digs of 101, 12, and 77.
Yet Smith’s been dumped, and George Bailey, Glenn Maxwell and Mitchell Marsh have been given a guernsey.
Bailey’s three digs in the UAE were 18, 28 and a duck, Maxwell 21, 76 and 20 – and Marsh didn’t play.
Smith and Bailey are rock-solid team-men. Maxwell’s a jack-man. Marsh is somewhere in between – he’s only played nine ODIs.
Smith is the best fieldsman of the four, anywhere from the cordon to the country and his leggies may have been handy.
So there can be no justification in dropping Smith. None whatsoever. If you needed someone in the trenches, you would want Smith by your side to deal with the world’s best pace attack of Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander.
And who have the selectors thrown in against the super trio?
Mitchell Johnson is right up there with them, but Nathan Coulter-Nile and Josh Hazlewood don’t cut the mustard ahead of James Faulkner and Mitchell Starc, who have been sent back to the Sheffield Shield.
Hello?
What will the likes of South Africa’s top batsmen in Hashim Amla, Quinton de Kok, Faf du Plessis, AB de Villiers, Rilee Rossouw and David Miller do to that attack?
And count themselves lucky JP Duminy is injured and out of the series.
Mitchell Johnson had better be at his most explosive best, while David Warner, Aaron Finch, Shane Watson and Michael Clarke had also better be playing well with the bat if the Australians are going to compete.
The Australian selectors haven’t made it a level playing field, let’s see how it pans out tonight.
It will be especially interesting to see how the spat between Clarke and Steyn – that Clarke started in South Africa during the Test series won 2-1 by Australia – plays out.
Expect Clarke to cop plenty of ‘chin music’ tonight from a fired up and unforgiving Steyn, and for the rest of the series.