- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Cricket Australia might as well cancel the Sheffield Shield and install a summer-long ‘Bigger Bash League’ because after yesterday’s Ashes selections it’s clear they don’t respect the first-class system.
The selectors should also burn any document titled ‘building a Test team by promoting youth’ as they returned to the bad old days of ignoring gifted youngsters in favour of journeyman cricketers in the dying days of their careers.
The Australian selectors mocked the proud Shield competition by picking Shaun Marsh, a 34-year-old batsman in middling form, and Tasmanian Tim Paine, a soon to be 33-year-old keeper struggling to get a game for the worst team in the Shield.
They ignored a host of young batsmen with fine Shield records, and dumped Test incumbents Hilton Cartwright (25 years old) and Glenn Maxwell (29) to pick Marsh, an injury-riddled old-timer who flopped in his last Test series.
Marsh looks set to bat at number six in the first Ashes Test after being named in a bizarre 13-man Australian squad. Maxwell must feel distraught and bewildered at his axing. The Victorian was handed a very tough task earlier this year, brought into the Test team in the middle of a red-hot series in India and asked to bat at six, a position which has long been a seeping wound for the Australians.
Maxwell promptly scored the first ton in three years by an Australian at number six, and averaged 37 across his four Tests in Asia, a place where many Aussie batsmen have struggled to average even 25. Then Maxwell went back to the Shield, took on the fresh challenge of batting at first drop, and did a solid job, averaging 40 across three matches.
If Maxwell was to lose his Test spot surely it had to be to someone who had absolutely dominated the Shield. Such as Cameron Bancroft, who made 442 runs at 110. But not to Marsh, whose returns were no better than Maxwell, with 236 runs at 39.
While Maxwell flourished in India, Marsh floundered, averaging 18 for the series before suffering a back injury in the fourth and final Test. This is Marsh the Test cricketer in a nutshell – inconsistent with the bat and prone to injury.
One of the hallmarks of Australia’s forgettable era of Test cricket from 2009 to 2016 was the Australian selectors’ obsession with picking veterans who had ordinary first-class records as stop-gap selections.
The selectors stop-gapped their way from Marcus North to Marsh, to Ed Cowan, to Rob Quiney, to George Bailey, to Alex Doolan.
All of those batsmen were deep into their first-class careers, yet none of them averaged better than 40 with the blade when they made their Test debuts. They were panicked selections, short-term fixes, and unsurprisingly not one of them managed a long stint in the team, playing an average of 12 Tests each.
The Test careers of Quiney (two Tests), Doolan (four) and Bailey (five) were over in a flash. It was the same story for then 31-year-old Callum Ferguson who, unbelievably, was dumped after his debut Test against South Africa last summer. In dumping Ferguson, 31-year-old wicketkeeper Peter Nevill and 37-year-old batsman Adam Voges in one go, Australia plumped for youth.
It paid immediate dividends, with Peter Handscomb and Matt Renshaw playing major roles as Australia completed an impressive run of 10 Tests following their humiliation in the second match against South Africa. Australia comfortably defeated South Africa in the third Test, swept Pakistan 3-0 at home, pushed India all the way to the last Test on the road, and drew 1-1 with a vastly improved Bangladesh side.
There was a sense that Australia, finally, had a team which could grow together and become a strong, cohesive unit, rather than the patched-up, always-in-flux line-ups they’d fielded so often previously. Yet here we are, just over two months later, with a stop-gap Ashes team which includes three players in the top seven who are aged 31 or older and another who is about to turn 31.
Neither Marsh nor Paine is likely to still be in the Australian team for the next Ashes in 18 months’ time. Neither Marsh nor Paine demanded selection to play in this Ashes. Neither Marsh nor Paine are to blame. The selectors have lost the plot, once more.