Hands up who expected John Inverarity to be named as the new full time Australian selector? Please raise your hand I said, anyone?
When I first read of his appointment today, I was a little suprised.
I remember John Inverarity playing Shield cricket at the tail end of his career in the early to mid 80’s, a respected journeyman and that was about it.
On closer examination, he is undoubtably a career cricket man: played at first class level for 23 years, 6 times in Tests for Australia; he captained West Australia to multiple Shield titles; coached Kent and Warwickshire.
He’s not Rod Marsh, but that’s a fairly complete cricketers resume.
The 67 year-old will be responsible for grooming the cream of the Gen-Y kids into Australia’s next world beating cricketers and simultaneously showing the exit door to Hussey, Ponting, Haddin and potentially Mitch ‘the loose cannon’ Johnson.
In the short hours since he has been appointedm he has espoused some very wise words that I only hope will be followed by the correct decisions.
He has expressed a desire to re-generate while also picking the side for next week. He cited Steve Waugh as an example of persisting with someone who had the talent, but needed time to mature.
So, can he lead a panel to astutely determine who is worth perservering with and who needs to go? Who is a stop gap solution? Who will be our next spinner or spinners?
Do we play horses for courses or bed down a solid starting XI and keep them together?
In all the press leading up to this appointment, I had not seen or heard his name mentioned once. Was it a inspired decision or a desperate grab?
As an eternal cricket optimist, I want to believe he will use his years of wisdom to make the strong decisions needed to return Australia to the summit again.
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