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It’s taken only three months for Pat Howard, Cricket Australia’s inaugural general manager of high performance, to rattle the cage.
Yesterday he dropped a bombshell, or more a clanger, by suggesting future Test selections will be governed by the standard of the opposition, not by form. A highly dangerous variation of the proposed rotation policy.
The higher-rated countries like England, South Africa, and India will face the best team Australia can muster at the time.
Lower-rated opponents like New Zealand, the West Indies, Zimbabwe, and Bangladesh will do battle with a smattering of emerging Australian talent for a taste of Test cricket.
“But we will never put a ‘B’ Australian team on the paddock,” was Howard’s promise. Try selling that to first choice Australian players ‘rested’, and to New Zealand et al.
It’s a provocative view from the former 20-cap Wallaby utility-back-cum-rugby coach-cum-pharmacist who freely admitted on appointment he knows very little about cricket.
And he’s just proved it. What better way to devalue the coveted baggy green cap and deny the more talented Australian batsmen and bowlers the chance to cash in against the lower-performed countries to bolster their career stats.
He has the future of Australian cricket in his powerful hands, answerable only to Cricket Australia boss James Sutherland.
Howard is in total charge of the selection panel, where he sits in on every selection meeting. He’s also in charge of every Test and first-class player and coach in the country. Lock, stock, and barrel.
And he knows very little about cricket. Which begs the question, how did Howard get the job in the first place?
He came from an identical position in rugby, a sport he has known inside out since the moment he could walk and talk.
His grandfather is legendary inside-back Cyril Towers, who captained the Wallabies in some of his latter 19 caps between 1926 and 1937. His father Jake Howard was a seven-cap teak-tough prop from 1970 to 1973.
But even with that superb background, and his own Wallaby experience, there was no high performance from Howard as the ARU’s general manager of high performance over the last four years, with the Wallabies winning just 58.9 percent, or 33 of 56, internationals.
Since rugby turned pro in 1996, only Eddie Jones has a marginally worse Wallaby coaching record, with 57 percent. But the mark is way below Rod Macqueen’s 79 percent, John Connolly’s 64 percent, and Greg Smith’s 63 percent. Even in the amateur days leading into professionalism Alan Jones had a 76.67 percent win record, Bobby Dwyer 63.01 percent.
The only Howard highs were capturing the Tri-Nations for the first time in a decade last season, and the 59-16 flogging of Six Nations champions France in 2010.
The lows, a 10-game losing streak to the All Blacks with just three wins in 15 meetings, the loss to Samoa at the beginning of last season, a very costly loss to Ireland in the last Rugby World Cup – and the meagre 58.9 percent.
Hardly a background that justifies making radical recommendations in a sport where Pat Howard is still wet behind the ears.
We haven’t heard the last of this left-field proposal by a long shot.