The Australian cricket selectors, as is well known, are the stupidest people who have ever been born. This has always been the case.
Since I’ve been seriously following Test cricket, the list of their egregious errors includes, but is not limited to:
These terrible errors will continue long into the future, because there is a procedure a person is forced to undergo when they become a national selector, which involves the surgical removal of a non-essential but nevertheless influential segment of the brain. There is simply no way to make a selector as intelligent as a normal person like you or me.
But it’s too easy to be harsh on selectors, just because they’re terrible. We have to remember that it was also selectors who chose Allan Border, and Shane Warne, and Don Bradman, and Ray Bright. They do get it right every now and then.
And what is important to remember about selectors is that, while they know very little about anything, they do know some things we don’t know. They have a more intimate knowledge of what’s going on behind the scenes, about players’ temperaments and personalities and capacity for gelling in team environments. They know players on a deeper level than the average punter, and that’s something to be respected, even if that depth of knowledge does occasionally lead them to ignore more superficial considerations like runs and wickets.
That’s why I like to cut selectors a bit of slack – even the modern lot responsible for confusing situations like the bafflingly divergent approach to Mitch Marsh and Glenn Maxwell. They have their reasons, and we need to respect that they’re doing their job as best they can. Nobody tries to pick a bad side, do they? Do they? No. Surely not. They mustn’t. Although… no. Almost certainly not.
Of course, one does wonder sometimes how our current selectors would’ve dealt with crises past. You can see them during Australia’s rebuilding phase of the 1980s, marking Steve Waugh “never to be picked again” in 1987 and letting Chris Matthews play fifty tests. You can see them leaving Bradman at home in 1930 and making Trevor the pre-eminent Chappell. But they do do their best.
So I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt, and in this brave new era, I’m going to go with the selectors and hope they’re proven right. Nic Maddinson was a surprising choice. Matthew Wade was not only surprising, but almost cruel, given he’s replacing a man who had shown more grit and determination than most of his peers in the first two Tests. But that doesn’t mean they’re bad choices.
However, if these are the selectors’ choices, they have to stick by them. Maddinson, Wade, Handscomb, Renshaw, Bird – and presumably they see Chadd Sayers as having a place in their plans as well – this lot has to be stuck with. Not to a stupid extent, not to a “I’m sure a big hundred for Mitch is right around the corner,” extent, necessarily; but faith must be placed. These are the men, it has been decided, who have what it takes to compete with the world, so they have to be given a chance to do so.
This means not repeating the treatment just meted out to Joe Mennie and Callum Ferguson. That means not repeating the saga of Bryce McGain. That means if these guys fail in this Test, nobody in the selection room throws up their hands and starts crossing their names off whiteboards or whatever it is they do. They’ve made the call: if they truly believe the surprising Maddinson et al are the answer, their duty now is to hold their nerve and be willing to wait for the answer to make itself clear.
If they don’t, if they simply panic at the first stumble by the new guard and look to rejig the whole outfit all over again, if they abandon their convictions as soon as they’re tested – then to hell with all of them.
It’s up to you, Messrs Hohns and company. Last chance. You show faith in them, and I’ll show faith in you. I know you can do it, guys. I want to believe.
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