- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Joe Mennie has deservedly forced his way in to the Test side by sheer weight of runs. Yet Australia is carrying on like he’s a Marsh brother.
Why is the nation in the throes of birthing kittens over this man’s selection?
Like Rod Marsh explained, Australia needed to plug a hole in its deplorable batting. The job obviously wasn’t for Jackson Bird or actual batsmen, it was tailor-made for an unidentifiable South Australian.
We should be thankful Marsh’s ethereal powers of deduction identified such an astonishing solution.
I would say this decision is the most insightful of the summer so far, and quite possibly his finest since 1981 when he parted with ten quid at Headingley.
For us non-ethereal non-believers with subordinate intelligence to Marsh, let me explain the simple reasoning.
Bird is an awful batsman, much like the rest of our batsmen. We are overrun by such a number, it can sometimes feel we’ve fit upwards of 15 in our first eleven. They arrive and perish in numbers akin to a Bruce Lee fight.
As a result, we need less awful batsmen.
On the other hand, Mennie is not an awful batsman. He averages 18, and scored a whole 32 runs only last week, all under his own steam. Reportedly in the company of other cricketers too.
You can see why the kid is custom-built for the arena.
Hence, you can forget his disgracefully impressive bowling record in Shield last season. You can also forget Marsh has labelled him a “dead set professional seam bowler”, meaning his diploma checks out too. It’s all a bonus.
Mennie is in the team to bolster a weakness with his weaker discipline. It’s like revamping a Christian rock group with Keith Richards and highlighting his ability to play drums, when in fact his strength really lies in narcotics abuse.
Get it now?
Right there, that is what merits the decision.
Mennie’s batting and Richards playing clean drums falls firmly in to line with the frippery of Australian selection logic.
And as we all know, Australia has always prided itself on putting it’s logic ahead of the team.
For those amazed by this week’s decision, do you really believe this is the first time Australian selectors have bizarrely plugged a deficiency?
Look at Steve Waugh.
Many believed him to be a bloke with 10,000-odd compelling Test runs, but you’d be a fool for thinking he was capped 168 times to fulfil worthless tasks like constructing totals.
Waugh’s batsmanship ran second to his crucial role covering for slackers who didn’t release enough books at Christmas time. You think he deforested half the country for paperbacks just so he could profit personally?
Those honest wrists weren’t developed from flicking rubbish off his pads all day, they matured from scribbling endless memoirs to bridge the shortfall left by the literary passengers that marred the side in the 1990’s.
Then there was Shane Warne. Greatest leg-spinner of all time? Wake up to yourself!
While publicly feted as a somewhat handy bowler, his primary task in the team was to initially plant the seeds for the “Family First” culture. While the team played, his job was to concentrate on conceiving.
What about Stuart MacGill?
Sure, he was perceived as an aggressive leggie who would field in the deep, preferably at fine leg or underground.
But he was really just a back-stop who bowled a bit.
After Ian Healy cost us a Test in Pakistan, MacGill was called in with two directives: to be a rare social outsider, and to sweep behind the gloveman,
Not only was this insurance against byes and heart-breaking last day defeats, it was because that’s where catches were never hit. Not to mention, symbolically isolated.
And are you one of those nuffies who valued Glenn McGrath for his nagging, seam-up teasing of the top-order?
Sure, he took a mountain of wickets, but it paled in comparison to his tireless work making up the team’s shortfall in charity.
While Warne was out chasing sex with anything remotely anthropological, McGrath was raising dollars for worthy causes. That’s why the spinner’s charity was crap.
Nathan Lyon? Troubadour first, Australia’s greatest finger-spinner second.
Lyon follows a long line including David Boon, Michael Hussey, Jason Krezja, Brendon Julian and the Lee brothers, all of whom were selected to cover the team song and/or torturously strum “Khe Sanh” a minimum of 2500 times after a win.
Finally, the Marsh brothers- Shaun and Mitch- are selected purely to compensate for the lacklustre performances of other Marshes in side.
Flip that any way you want to.
So next time you feel like criticising the logic behind Mennie’s selection for Perth, remember this article.
Rod Marsh’s logic is right, and you are wrong.