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Time to apply the DRS to our national selection panel

Roar Guru
16th August, 2016
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Cameron Bancroft is among a number of the country's brightest. Is he due a baggy green? (AAP Image/Will Russell)
Roar Guru
16th August, 2016
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Oh dear. Shaun Marsh will now be padding up for the 2016-17 summer of cricket.

The likes of Mohammed Amir, Wahab Riaz, Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn will have a proverbial field day, opening a corridor of certainty for slips catching practice coming our way.

Not Marsh’s fault of course – any century overseas is a great effort.

But if he was selected due to his ability to score runs on the sub-continent, why wasn’t he at in the side at number six for the first Test?

On Sunday, Ronan O’Connell called out Rod Marsh, Mark Waugh, Andy Bichel and Trevor Hohns for their ‘horses for courses’ brain explosion for the dead rubber.

More damning however, this panel’s ongoing obsession with finding karma in team balance overlooks a fundamental strength of an Australian cricket’s team structure – we are at our best with six batsmen, a keeper, and four bowlers. Tried and true, like a classic 4-4-2 in football.

We have been chasing the all-rounder since Andrew Flintoff destroyed us in 2005, and it is time to put the dream to bed.

The experiment with Mitchell Marsh must end. Marsh has now played 18 Tests, with 28 innings, and produced two 50s and no hundreds, with an average of 24.62. He has 27 wickets at 36.22.

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At the moment he is a handy wicket-taker, but not a strike bowler. He cannot bat in the top six on the proverbial ‘highways’ in Australia nor on foreign fields.

In theory, Marsh should be picked as the third seamer who can bat eight, but his numbers with the ball don’t stack up for this to be realised.

I was surprised Marsh was picked in the tour, let alone the team for the first Test. Then Moises Henriques was astoundingly called up.

To compound the shock for those who are still interested in the tour, the selectors then named both M Marsh and M Henriques for the third Test – both in the top six!

Henriques has played four Tests, and averages 26.67 (with two 50s in India), and two wickets at 77.5.

Unfortunately, I get the feeling Waugh may have been watching a few too many NSW shield games, as this selection puts a player with four first-class hundreds, over a career spanning more than a decade, in the top six of our premier side – and in conditions where we are already dropping the ball (so to speak).

As a New South Welshman I am proud to cheekily abide by the mantra that a strong NSW produces a strong Australian cricket team, but even I recognise this selection as madness.

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The combined results to date? Marsh bowled ten wicketless overs for 45, and racked up his second Test 50 in his 28th innings. Henriques looked clueless with the bat and did not get tossed the ball, even with the extended Sri Lankan sixth-wicket partnership.

Throw in the mix the recently demoted Glenn Maxwell (three Tests, bat 13, ball 38), and we now look like England in the 1990s. The obsession with a dime-a-dozen batch of bits and pieces players. How Aussies laughed at the touring English sides featuring Mark Eahlam, Ronnie Irani and the like.

To give you a comparison with Marsh and Henriques, and how far Test expectations have fallen, Eahlam averaged 21 with the bat and 28 with the ball in his brief Test career.

Secondly, we threw away a wonderful opportunity to build our future top six with the 2015 A team tour to India, which we won 1-0 from two matches. Cameron Bancroft was a stand-out, with Peter Handscomb also having a strong innings in one game.

Why were both Bancroft and Handscomb (or one at a minimum) not part of the touring team to Sri Lanka?

Finally, there was no reward for performance with the willow at domestic level over the 2015-16 summer. Of the top players, Bancroft and Handscomb featured prominently again in the runs, with young tyros Kurtis Patterson and Travis Dean also having strong seasons. Critically, all are under 25.

To reiterate my comment regarding the A tour, surely one or two of these guys should have been considered to tour.

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With players demonstrating they can perform in spin-friendly conditions overseas, and back it up with more-than-solid domestic seasons, they should be automatic call-ups for a national tour to a country committed to producing rank turners.

Thus back to the DRS. The selectors have wasted their reviews on three counts: firstly, continued investment in patchy all-rounders. Secondly, non-selection of those who performed well with the bat in India on the 2015 A tour. And thirdly, ignoring domestic form and runs on the board from the Shield.

On the field, two unsuccessful reviews and you lose the opportunity to right the wrongs of a howler. This selection panel has made too many of their own to be treated seriously in building our next champion XI.

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