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The only positive thing to be said about the announcement of the Test squad to tour Sri Lanka is that it shows some signs that the Australian selectors are figuring out there is some genuine young talent in our cricketing ranks.
Unfortunately on the whole there are the same mistakes being made in the spin bowling ranks, and chief selector, Andrew Hiltich, and the current selection panel remain condemned for their inexplicable decision to drop Australian cricket’s premier batsman, Simon Katich.
The selection of this team just continues what appears to be a culture of confusion, inconsistency and incompetence, which has manifested itself over the past couple of years in the selection of teams and the running of Cricket Australia.
Today’s announcement continues this narrative of problems that have shown up in the controversy of team selection in the last Ashes series, the chopping and changing of our spinners, and the dropping of Katich.
One cannot help but lay the blame for the Katich decision firmly at the feet of the new Australian cricket captain, Michael Clarke. It is well known that Clarke and Katich are not the best of friends.
The most well documented ‘disagreement’ between the two came after the Sydney Test against Pakistan, when Katich grabbed Clarke by the throat after a disagreement over the importance of singing the team song, as reported in The Daily Telegraph (6 February, 2009).
If it is in fact the case that Clarke is responsible for this, then he should go the way of his underpants advertisements – quietly out the back door. If this a slightly obtuse reference, Clarke decided it wasn’t “captainly” to be seen with his pants down, so he ditched the awkward Bonds undies ads.
Other question marks hang over the ongoing problems with the spin bowling selections.
Personally, I love having a lad named Beer in the Australian cricket team, as I suspect does VB, who is sponsoring the tour – aptly named the VB tour of Sri Lanka.
I was disappointed for the sake of this article that Lion Nathan doesn’t own VB, due to the selection of Nathan Lyon. Conspiracy theories were flowing like warm overpriced mid strength lager on day three at the MCG…
One might be starting to wonder if the strategy is to distract the cricket loving public with thoughts of beer until Australian cricket gets back up off the mat. Just throwing it out there…
Enough about beer, let’s talk about Beer. Beer has played only the one Test for an average of 112, claiming only the one wicket. More importantly, Beer’s first class career is nothing to write home about, claiming only 31 wickets at 45.96 in 13 matches.
The other spinner selected is an unknown by the name of Nathan Lyon from South Australia. Having not heard of Lyon before I decided to search for the profile of Nathan Lyon on the great CricInfo site, to learn more about the lad Andrew Hiltich calls “a young man with immense potential.” The alarm bells started ringing when there was not even a mug shot to be seen – and then to see the statistics…
Hiltich points to the reason for Lyon’s selection as: “…he impressed all who have seen him in the last year and bowled beautifully during the one-day component of the A squad’s recent tour where he was named player of the series.”
All one can say is it doesn’t take much to get selected in the Australian Test team these days. I personally cannot judge Lyon, having not seen him bowl, but one has to scratch ones head and maybe pull out a few clumps of hair at the selection of a player who has played only four first class matches (just 1039 balls bowled).
Nathan Hauritz is still the best choice for the Test spinner, having played the same amount of Tests as the two chosen spinners have played first class matches.
To paraphrase from Australia’s 16th Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, there is a light on the hill for suffering supporters of Australian cricket. That light is in our fast bowling stocks.
Ryan Harris has been a stand out of Australian cricket of the past few years in ODIs and recently in Test matches, with an awesome ability to swing the bowl both ways, and a deceptive pace.
Trent Copeland of NSW has proven himself to be amongst the best of the Sheffield Shield’s fast bowlers and has actually earned his spot in this team unlike many others. At first-class level he has the impressive figures of 87 wickets at 21.67.
James Pattinson of Victoria showed talent in the last state season, but once again has only played six first-class matches.
If they are on Mitchell Johnson and Peter Siddle are amongst the best Test bowlers in the world, but if they are not firing both can be disastrously ineffective, or worse.
As a humble armchair cricket fanatic one can’t help feeling that the Australian Test team should field our best 11, as they are and use the Shield competition to blood players and give them experience before they are given a once converted baggy green.
It is hard to see this team achieving the stated goal from Hiltich in the Cricket Australia media release, to “… strive to get back to the top of world rankings in Test cricket.”
I also cannot resist making suggestions taking into account the realities of the leadership group, in batting order and also depending on form and pitch conditions having either one of the fast bowlers or Nathan Hauritz as 12th man.
Not the Test squad: Simon Katich, Shane Watson, Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke, Brad Hodge, Michael Hussey, Brad Haddin, Mitchell Johnson, Peter Siddle, Trent Copeland, Ryan Harris, Nathan Hauritz.
Test squad for Sri Lanka: Michael Clarke (c), Shane Watson (vc), Michael Beer, Trent Copeland, Brad Haddin, Ryan Harris, Phillip Hughes, Michael Hussey, Mitchell Johnson, Usman Khawaja, Nathan Lyon, Shaun Marsh, James Pattinson, Ricky Ponting, Peter Siddle.
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