Warner
Finch
Khawaja
Smith
Watson
Maxwell
Marsh
Faulkner
Nevill
Zampa
Hazlewood

I think Finch-Warner-Khawaja as the top 3, then Watto-Smith-Maxwell as the next three. I know Watson did make a hundred a few games ago opening but in typical Watto fashion it was in a dead rubber and he has had a lot of success with Rajasthan in the IPL batting at 4. Having said that I wouldn’t be against Watto opening and Finch in the middle order, but that top 6 all need to play.

But T20 batting needs to be adaptable and a combination of power hitter and nudger/stroke-player in the middle overs is key, sometimes two power hitters give up too many dot balls.

So if the second wicket falls and Khawaja is still in send out Watto or Maxwell, if Finch or Warner are in send out Smith, that combination of power and subtlety will work and allow the power hitters (Maxwell-Marsh-Faulkner) to go for it at the end.

I also think Hazlewood should be in ahead of Hastings or NCN as a strike weapon. His ability to hit the pitch hard and get variable bounce is crucial.

And Agar shouldn’t be considered, the only thing worse than having no spinners in India is having a bad one!

It seems as though we just won the 50-over World Cup and now their is a 20-over World Cup. Would have though it would have been smarter to wait until next year for the world T20, giving us a two year gap between world cups.

Direct replacement if Siddle is injured. I would keep number 6 as an all-rounders spot and I don’t think Faulkner’s batting is up to scratch at the moment. If Mitch Marsh’s batting doesn’t improve I think Glenn Maxwell is the next in line.

I liked the balance of our attack in Adelaide, Hazlewood the tall bouncy opener, who whilst not operating at +140 still hits the bat very hard. Starc the tearaway with genuine pace to rattle the batsmen and Siddle the line and length grafter who asks questions of the batsman’s technique and temperament.

Pattinson is the natural replacement for Starc, Coulter-Nile would also be more in the Starc role.

Boland is more of the Hazlewood type, hits the pitch hard, but not a tearaway.

Bird and Sayers are more replacements for Siddle – but I personally would pick James Faulkner in that role ahead of both of them – 179 FC wickets at 23 a piece and 2.9 economy rate. Also adds batting depth to cover the Marshes and has that X-factor.

I think the whole “coporate pitches” thing can sometimes lean towards conspiracy theory rather than fact in some cases but this NZ series is really convincing me that there is more to it and it has more to do with the broadcaster than the states wanting more cash.

Whilst CA might say that lack of a crowd is the reason to go to day/night test, no large sporting organisation has match revenue as there main source of income anymore, it is all TV rights. Test cricket is a great TV product – it captures a massive part of the male population – in all states – for up to 30 hours giving great commercial opportunities through sponsorship and ads. Now tell me that is not enhanced by having cricket at prime time for 5 days from Perth and now from Adelaide. It gives me little faith that the Adelaide pitch will be anything less than a road, so Channel 9 can get five nights of lovely HD ads.

Corporate pitches are the issue for me. Until we can somehow work out how to stop cricket administrators and TV execs influencing pitches to ensure 5 days of cricket the issue won’t be resolved. I am personally looking forward to the Adelaide test for the more exciting battle between bat and ball.

As for the bats I think whilst they give more value for shots, especially on roped in grounds, they also provide less room for error as edges fly to the slips whilst leading edges and shot not quite from the middle carry to fielders in front of the bat.

I think the T20 and ODI revolution has definitely accelerated run rates though which is a good thing.

I also think right now there is a real lack of quality bowling, and an inability for teams to adapt their bowling to different conditions. Most of stars in cricket right now are batsmen (batters?) and better all-round bowling units are needed to combat them.

So on Wednesday night when Anthony Mundine was bashed around for 11 rounds, more than 30 minutes, which is longer than any MMA fight, that was sport?

When he was knocked down 3 times in 2 rounds but was stood up by the referee, given 10 seconds to recover enough to walk two paces forward with his hands and continue to get his head pounded by gloves that are designed to lessen the blows to the head so the brain can be rattled more, that was sport?

But on Sunday, when an Olympic Judo bronze medallist and a 16-time boxing champion go into a cage and fight where one is knocked out and the referee immediately stops the fight to avoid further damage, that’s barbaric?

MMA is not for everyone but writing ill-informed pieces like this really aggravates MMA fans who are made to feel like thugs and low-life’s when they are sports fans like anyone else.

Bu the way the quote “looking for openings, seizing on it and then trying to land a combination or just a simple scoring punch” is a pretty succinct summation of what Holly Holm did on Sunday, or what Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Mark Hunt and Robert Whittaker did in their bouts.

South Africa played really well and their bowling is a real strength but Sri Lanka gave them a massive advantage in team selection. Picking a debutante in a quarter final and then dropping Thirimanne to 4 was crazy. 261 runs @ 52.2 at SR of 84 and you get put down the order. I can only think that SL wanted Perera to get a fast start but he looked overawed by the situation.

As a Cats fan I’m pretty excited to watch the development of our 20-23 year old players. We have a pretty significant gap between the over 30’s like Bartel, Kelly, Enright and the younger blokes in their early 20’s. Whilst we have the most 30+ players in the league (9), we have the fourth-least amount of 24-29 year-olds (13) behind only GWS (9), Gold Coast (12) and Western Bulldogs (12). So there is a lot of scope for improvement. And adding Clark (27yo), Blease (24yo) and Stanley (24yo) was an attempt to fill that experience void.

I think we are looking at 5th – 8th this year, but it depends on our mid-tier players stepping up. Duncan, Motlop, Guthrie, Horlin-Smith, Murdoch, Caddy, Walker, Kersten, Smedts, Vardy and Simpson are the keys, we need 4-5 of these players to take the next step and become top-tier players, with Motlop, Duncan and Caddy the most likely along with my favourite GHS (watch how many times he roves the ball directly off the contest not letting it hit the ground first, can’t teach that).

I also think the Clark-Hawkins combination will be crucial. Most good teams have two key forwards, whether it’s Franklin-Tippett or Roughead-Gunston or Westhoff-Schulz or Pavlich-Mayne. The Cats have always relied on two key forwards to share the load, Mooney-N Ablett in 2007, Mooney-Hawkins in 2009 and Hawkins-Podsiadly in 2011. That was missing last year without Pods and hopefully Clark can be that second option, whether it’s for kicking goals himself or creating more one-on-one opportunities for Hawkins.

As for the team you picked I think Jed Bews will get opportunities to play on the small forwards this year, he has good pace which we have been exposed against (namely Walters and Ballantyne) and I, like every Cats fan at KP on Thursday night, am super-excited about Nakia Cockatoo!

My issue isn’t necessarily the “Speak English” phase that Warner used but the body language and aggression at the opposition. If Sharma did say something offensive in Hindi that Warner did pick up on, he has the right to remonstrate with him. I think that Warner was trying to imply that Sharma was a coward for sledging in Hindi instead of English. Essentially a “Go on, say it to my face!” retort if you will.

What has annoyed me about the recent Test series and other series is the aggression towards each other. I suspect sledging hasn’t got worse since the days of Hayden, Warne, M Waugh, McGrath and co., some of the great sledgers, but this was done at a distance like the other end of the pitch when bowling or the slips or covers when fielding (a part from the odd McGrath vs. Sarwan incident). None of this in-your-face, chest-to-chest stare down BS that both teams have been doing recently, predominately Warner and Kohli, but also helped on by Sharma, Haddin, Dhawan and Clarke.

I find myself watching this thinking “Just get on with it boys; Over rates! Someone think of the OVER RATES!”.

I think a 12-team competition would be way too diluted and the standard of cricket would drop significantly, looking at English cricket, where they have 18 first-class teams, even with overseas players, the comments are often that the standard is lower than the Sheffield Shield.

10 years ago South Africa re-shaped their domestic cricket ot model the Sheffield Shield, they had 11 FC teams and condensed them to 6 teams, with a double round-robin format, a carbon copy of the Shield.

Having said that I think there is scope for an ACT and Northern Territory team based out of Manuka Oval and Alice Springs, they can both be good stepping stones for you cricketers to get FC experience, especially NSW cricketers getting down to Canberra to play. We currently have just under 150 national and state contracted cricketers, and with two extra team we could get that to 200.

1. A Finch
2. D Warner
3. S Watson
4. M Clarke (c)
5. C White
6. G Maxwell
7. M Wade
8. J Faulkner
9. M Johnson
10. N Coulter-Nile
11. P Cummins

12. N Lyon
13. S Smith
14. M Starc
15. M Marsh

What a great article, I couldn’t have articulated better the nuances of Test cricket. Watching the Pakistani’s battle the new ball, painstakingly get though the early sessions and then capitalising later with Sarfraz was awesome.

Then for the Aussies to come out and counter-attack through Warner I thought was a great day of test cricket.

It’s sad that they are playing at a barren ground with no supporters, although hopefully there will be more today and tomorrow.

The pressure is what gets me so exited about Test cricket, coming out at 2/7 and ducking and parrying Mitch Johnson bouncers, batsman who have swashbuckled their way to 90 suddenly going into their shell looking for a Test ton and the last 10 minutes of a session where survival to the break is all a batsman is preoccupied with, ah its great.

Or did Arthur’s dropping of Khawaja send him into a form spiral!

Faulkner’s batting is just not quite up to scratch to bat at 6 for Australia but he is a great talent. I also think Haddin should bat ahead of Marsh in the upcoming tests as he is a very good player of spin, get him in one place earlier and allow him an extra partnership with a top-order batsman.

Yes, I did. I agree that his keeping needs work, especially to spin. That’s why I think Whiteman and Nevill have both jumped ahead of him.

In terms of keeping ability he would be behind Haddin, Hartley, Paine and Nevill. Considering Handscomb can’t get a gig in front of him and Ludeman went to SA from VIC to get a go I think Wade is in front of them. I think if Haddin got injured today, Whiteman would be sent over to replace him in the test side right now. It will be interesting to see when they name the T20 team who gets the nod, as Haddin won’t be back in time from the UAE to play that game. I think they might get Dunk to keep.

His “conversion rate” at first class level is 31%, compare that to our established batsmen right now – Clarke 48.8%, Warner 43.3%, Rogers 40.5%, Smith 36.1%, even whipping boy Hughes is 37.1%. I think the article showed that this is the major problem for most batsmen on the list – White 30.5%, Marsh 28.6%, Ferguson 23.1%, Finch 17.6%, Paine 4%. Forrest is the only outlier with 43.5% but he has got to fifty a lot less then the other (10 100’s, 13 50’s).

The Finch case just intrigues me Nordburg, the fact that he is such a good limited-overs player and can’t get his red ball game together, we’ve seen Warner successfully do it but Finch can’t. I also had Cosgrove and Bailey on my list to talk about but the article was getting a bit long!

Thanks Vibhor, I agree with the notion that age is no barrier, look at Mike Hussey!

Mitch Marsh is injured, from an injury sustained playing in the CLT20, and now we are one short again. Boof did a ring-around to a few blokes and Phil Hughes is available for a hit on Sunday. Next thing a we’ll have a bloke having to leave early to go to a wedding!

You lost me at “Christensen and Horlin-Smith are outside receivers who prefer not to get their hands dirty”, the others I agree, but are burst players, particularly Duncan, Murdoch and Motlop, all three critical to the run-and-carry game they play through the midfield. I agree with the aging backline, but Geelong has always chosen to send older head back, like Kelly this year and Bartel the year before. I think a lot will hinge on the recruitment of James Frawley, who is seen as a successor to Lonergan.

As for blaming contentious umpiring decisions for them getting a top four position, that’s ridiculous. The straight sets exit showed smacked of the lack of consistency they have shown through games, a trait of a young team, and the fact that they won so many games under 2 goals was testament to the fighting spirit the team has and is moving onto its young players.

The Cats are rebuilding whist still winning and have a strange list dynamic at the moment, they have 29 players on the list 23 years old and under, only Gold Coast and GWS have more than that, they currently only have 8 players between 24-29 years old but they have 9 players who are 30+. Futher breakdown is:
18-20yo: 9 players
21-23yo: 20 players
24-26yo: 7 players
27-29yo: 1 player
30+: 9 players

So they have the third most players 23 and under, equal least (with GWS) players 24-29 and highest number of players 30+ in the league.

So in the next 3 years the Cats will lose the likes Enright, Bartel, Kelly, Mackie, Lonergan, Johnson, Stokes.

Selwood, Hawkins, Taylor, Varcoe will enter the senior part of the career, nearing 30yo.

Young blokes like Caddy, Duncan, Christensen, Motlop, Vardy, Menzel (hopefully), Murdoch, Guthrie, Horlin-Smith will be developing into better senior players.

I think the Cats future is OK Dan.

Currently has a FC batting average of 41 and FC bowling average of 37. I think he is a horses-for courses selection at 6, if they pick both spinners then Watson is at six, three quicks and they pick Maxwell. Sadly he is probably the only viable spinning all-rounder we have with Clarke not bowling too much. I don’t count Steve Smith’s long hops as spin either! I imaging if this was an Indian tour they wouldn’t have picked him but have more confidence in him against Pakistan.

Exactly, they need to make a white or yellow based strip, it’s not that hard, even sooks like Collingwood, Carlton and Essendon have one.