Sometime around 1990, someone – was it Peter Roebuck? – famously dubbed Mark Waugh “Afghanistan”, as in “the forgotten war”.

I am reminded of this by Australia A’s recently concluded tour of Pakistan, not just because of the geographic proximity, but also because the tour seems to have been completely forgotten. I will also come to a third reason in due course.

Under normal circumstances – i.e., Australia having settled test and ODI sides – the lack of interest in this tour would be understandable. Indeed, previous out-of-season or away matches by Australia A (who also toured Pakistan in September 2005, for example) have attracted essentially no public interest in Australia.

However this time the situation should have been very different, because the recent and highly publicized retirements from international cricket of Warne, McGrath, Langer and Martyn have left major gaps in our test side, and clearly the Australia A tour of Pakistan was going to be of major significance in deciding who will take these places.

As it turns out the plague of Australian hamstring injuries at the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa has added extra significance to the Australia A tour – replacements from these ranks must suddenly be found for Ponting, M Hussey and Watson for the upcoming ODIs in India.

Despite all this, the Australia A tour seems to have received no public attention in Australia. Fortunately this situation may be remedied via cricinfo, with cricinfo providing details of happenings.

My overall reading of this information is that Australia A become better and better with each game. The tour started with three one-day matches, all of which were lost. However in each match Australia A batted first, which is usually a disadvantage on the flat pitches of Pakistan, where the chasing side has the advantage of knowing how many runs it needs to extract from favourable batting conditions. For example, in the last match Australia A posted 9/331, only for Pakistan A to chase this down with 16 balls to spare (think Johannesburg in 2006, when South Africa won after Australia made 434).

After the one-day matches there were two so-called “unofficial Tests”, except that they weren’t really tests in that they only had 4 playing days. In the first this did not matter because it took Australia A less time than this to notch a crushing win by an innings and 203 runs after posting a massive 657/8 declared. The second match was more evenly contested, however Australia A were well on top when rain washed out most of the last day.

Of far more interest than the overall picture are the sub-plots concerning contests for full Australian selection. If we ignore the question of whether Andrew Symonds will cement a permanent place at 6 in the Australian test side, this still leaves three major issues to be settled for the test side: who will replace each of Langer, Warne and McGrath.

Before the tour started the selectors clearly signalled that what happened in Pakistan was going to be of no relevance in terms of replacing McGrath. The 2006-7 season made it clear that Australia already has a good stable of fast bowlers in Lee, Clark, Bracken, Johnson and Tait. None of these are in McGrath’s class, but they are all competent or better, and it is clear that with Troy Cooley’s philosophy of fast bowlers “hunting like a pack”, the hope is that whichever 3 or 4 of these are chosen in a test attack, the sum will be greater than that of the individual parts.

To this list of 5 should now be added Ben Hilfenhaus. It was always the case that this bowler of outstanding potential would be considered to replace McGrath, and this was signalled clearly by his removal from the Australia A tour to take the place of Tait in South Africa.

And if a stable of 6 fast bowlers is not enough, it is likely that Jason Gillespie will be next cab off the rank. In some ways an “Afghanistan” of Australian cricket, Gillespie has actually been the best bowler in domestic cricket over the last 2 seasons, and in his last test match he was awarded both man of the match and player of the series (remember his deeds in Bangladesh last year?). Eventually Gillespie – still one of Australia’s 25 contracted players – was summoned into the Australia A squad to replace Hilfenhaus, but the tardiness of the selectors in naming a replacement showed that the Pakistan A tour was not about finding a replacement for McGrath.

So from the scores in Pakistan we cannot divine who will take McGrath’s test place, but a logical guess is that either Hilfenhaus or Johnson will join Lee and Clark. My preference would be for Hilfenhaus, who clearly has far greater potential.

Different to the above situation, the selection of 4 spinners – MacGill, Cullen, Bailey and White – signalled that events on tour were of relevance in terms of Warne’s position. In this respect it is very interesting that Cullen was the team’s best bowler – both in terms of average and economy – in the one-day series, while in the 4-day matches he also did very well (5 wickets at an average of 18.2). By contrast, Bailey was cannon-fodder, while MacGill was his usual self: he took wickets, conceded runs, ran into discplinary problems, and was not used in the one-day matches. These days White is a batting all-rounder rather than a spin bowler, so clearly his future would be as a 6 rather than as a replacement for Warne.

What to take out of the above? Understandably, reports are that MacGill – who must have thought his career was over – has been rejuvenated by Warne’s retirement, and surely he will be used in the short-term in Warne’s place: 198 wickets in 40 tests virtually demands this. Further, the Australian selectors prefer wrist-spin where possible. In this respect the long-term news from the Pakistan A tour is not good: White can no longer be considered a genuine spinner, and Bailey seems to have been found wanting. So perhaps the selectors will have to change philosophy and the off-spinner Dan Cullen will become the first-choice spinner in the long term?

Thirdly, Langer’s position. There have been suggestions that Hodge or Mike Hussey or even Shane Watson might be considered, but these are all silly ideas: clearly it should be Rogers vs Jaques, with even the loser probably eventually becoming a winner by getting Hayden’s place. After his phenomenal 2006-7 season, when he was deservedly the Pura Cup Player of the Series, Rogers surely had the edge over Jaques. But if performance in Pakistan is to count for anything, then Jaques has reasserted himself: he was the team’s best batsman in the 4-day matches (370 runs at 123.3), performing far better than Rogers, while in the one-day games he was second best (118 runs at 59.0), a smidgeon behind Rogers.

I have always argued that Jaques should become Hayden’s new partner. Both Rogers and Jaques are lefties, so this is not an issue: Australia is going to continue to have a left-left opening pairing, regardless. Rather, the issue is style of play. The success of Langer and Hayden is often attributed to their mateship, but never mentioned is their different styles of play: as befits a tall man, Hayden is at his best when playing straight, while the much smaller Langer is prolific through the point arc. In other words, when bowling to Langer and Hayden, a bowler must constantly change his length, something that is difficult to do.

My understanding is that Rogers is similar to Hayden in being a straight-batted player, while Jaques is very much an exponent of unorthodox glides and nudges, similar (but not identical) to Langer. This suggests to me that Jaques is more complementery to Hayden, which combined with his recent form suggests he should be given Langer’s place. A proviso here is that he can hook and pull well, weapons which Hayden and Langer have shown are essential for strong performance as an opener.

This is where the relevance of the Pakistan tour should have ended. However with injures in South Africa, it has not.

Quite rightly Hopes has been called in as a replacement for Watson. Hopes has neither the talent nor the athleticism of Watson, but he has become better year by year, and he has determination. Indeed, there is a marked contrast here between the two players: whereas Watson recalls Andre Agassi’s quip about Richark Krajicek – “He only needs to look at a tennis court to get injured” – Hopes played on through most of last season needing shoulder surgery, doing so in the hope of World Cup selection.

Hopes had excellent batting and bowling form in Pakistan, and it can be expected that his low-trajectory, along-the-wicket bowling style will be well suited to India, where for example Scott Styris of New Zealand has had success as a bowler.

In contrast to the Hopes situation, one must question the wisdom of the selectors in calling up Haddin and Voges for the Indian tour.

Dealing first with Haddin, he is to be admired for his first-class record in Australia and for the way he worked hard a few years ago to regain favour with the selectors. However the feeling grows that he is one of those players who is trapped in the no-man’s land of being excellent at first-class cricket but wanting at international level. By now he has played as many as 21 ODIs – a lot of opportunities – for the unsatisfactory average of 25.94 with just one half century. At the recent Twenty20 World Cup he played two matches, adding nothing as Australia lost disastrously to Zimbabwe and then to India from a winnable position.

Compare this, for example, with Damien Martyn’s contributions as “first reserve” some years ago: seemingly every time he received a chance due to injury, he made a telling contribution. Thus it was no surprise that in due course he became an excellent international player.

This raises not just the issue of whether Haddin should be in India as a replacement for a specialist batsman (M Hussey), but also of whether he is the heir to Gilchrist. While the selectors seem to have cooled on Chris Hartley (Qld) and Adam Crosthwaite (Vic), it is noticeable that they gave WA’s Luke Ronchi the gloves for the Pakistan tour, which he ended with a standout century (107 off 109 balls in a team score of 293). One hard-hitting West Australian keeper-batsman may end up replacing another in the Australian side.

Which brings me to Voges. He emerged from nowhere to make the test squad for last year’s Perth test against England, following Martyn’s sudden retirement. He then made his ODI debut in New Zealand a few months later, was awarded a Cricket Australia contract, and for no obvious reason he was named Australia A captain for the tour of Pakistan. There is nothing in his limited and modest first-class record to explain why the Australian selectors clearly think so highly of him. Nor did he do anything in Pakistan to justify his call-up for the India tour: in the 4-day matches he performed worst of all the Australia A batsmen, while in the one-dayers he was middle of the bunch (of Australian batsmen).

I guess it’s the job of selectors to discern nuggets of gold where others cannot see them, but in the case of Voges there is nothing that overtly distinguishes him from a host of other Australian batsmen.

On the other hand, consider the case of David Hussey. He first drew significant attention to himself when he scored 212 not out as Victoria made a remarkable 7-455 on the fourth day to defeat NSW in Newcastle, all part of a boom 2003-4 season for him. The next Australian season he was selected for Australia A and batted superbly in one-day matches against the West Indies and Pakistan, scoring a century. Like his elder brother he has batted formidably in English County Cricket, being a major reason for Nottinghamshire’s title win in 2005, and being selected in the team of the season (along with his older brother). It’s true that he’s had his ups and downs for Victoria, but last year he was back to his best, recording the third-highest run aggregate in Pura Cup cricket. He has celebrated his Australia A recall with further excellent form in Pakistan, where he easily outperformed Voges. All in all his first-class record speaks for itself: 8111 runs at an average of 55.55 with 30 centuries.

To end this piece where it started, is David Hussey the “Afghanistan” of current Australian cricket, i.e., the forgetten younger brother whom the selectors neglect to elevate? In hindsight the Australian selectors erred by waiting so long to choose Mike Hussey, and it seems they are repeating this error with the now 30-year-old David. Given Australia’s proud record of excellent batting brothers, why are the Husseys not being given a chance to be the next Chappells and Waughs of international cricket?