- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Mickey Arthur wants you to stop bagging the rotation policy guys. Because the Aussie team and management knows exactly how who is in their best team.
Furthermore, rotation and injury prevention has been about managing players in an effort to put them on the park as much as possible.
“We’re very clear on who the best team is and who the best attack is,” Arthur told reporters.
The only problem with that is that no one else seems to know, and the six Test matches played over the summer only served to muddy the waters.
I’ll admit, many armchair critics like myself have no idea what’s actually happening inside the Aussie camp. We don’t know how injured those guys are and what the best course of action is to help them.
But to suggest they know what their best attack is does bemuse me a little.
It is patently unclear to me, and I think I’m taking more than a few of you with me, who the top three quicks in the country are at the moment.
I reckon, with all permutations and combinations considered, I could list at least five different lineups that could potentially be our ‘best.’
Whether injury, sports science, good or bad tactics or anything else is the reason for this is beside the point.
The point is that our best attack is rather ambiguous to most people outside the Australian setup.
I could tell you right now who’s going to be in the English attack when our boys arrive at Trent Bridge.
We can safely assume that James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann will be there, and these three will almost definitely play in all five games.
The other spot is likely to be taken by Tim Bresnan or Steve Finn.
Easy.
For the Aussies, we know Siddle and Lyon will be on the team sheet on the first day.
And that’s all we can safely assume for now.
Will it be Bird? Or Johnson? Or Hilfenhaus? Maybe Ryan Harris? What if James Pattinson recovers from injury? Or the young gun Cummins? That’s not even mentioning Mitchell Starc…
Basically, I have no idea.
We don’t even know how many games either of our two certainties will play, with the Aussie selectors loving a shakeup as much as the Cat Empire love a shakedown.
The constant changes to our side this summer has inevitably led to a situation where we’ve had less Test match exposure for more candidates.
And while we should celebrate the fact that we got to see Jackson Bird and a rejuvenated Mitchell Johnson in action, we should almost certainly lament the fact that we didn’t have our best attack available to us for that crunch fixture against South Africa.
We were one game away from being number one in the world, and we rested our supposed number one bowler, Peter Siddle.
Successful teams don’t hold their aces in their hand when all the chips are on the table.
There’s no doubt we’ll be playing our best side in the Ashes, but surely it’s folly to hold players back when we’re facing the number one side in the world, at home, with the top ranking on the line.
Can anyone say that fielding a completely new lineup of quickies that day didn’t profoundly impact our chances of winning that game?
Whether it’s relevant anymore or no, but the great Aussie Test teams of the past were as resistant to change as Tony Abbot’s opinion on the Carbon tax.
You couldn’t have rested Glenn McGrath. You just couldn’t have.
He would have told you to shove it and walked out onto the pitch even if his name wasn’t on the team sheet.
If he thought he was fit to play, he was playing.
The English side have a McGrath-esque situation, with Broad, Anderson and Swann rarely missing a game in the whites.
South Africa are the same. Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Morne Morkel always play when they’re fit.
I know we’ve had some bad luck with injuries. I know guys carry niggles.
I also have no clue who our best three quickies are, and when they’ll be fit.
I don’t know whether our spinner is capable of bowling out good batting lineups on wearing tracks.
I don’t know whether Ryan Harris, James Pattinson or Pat Cummins will make it through a Test match, let alone a five match series.
I know that they’re all quality players, and I have no doubts about their talent and skill.
I just don’t know how to combine all our fast bowlers, about six of whom have proved they are major assets to the team on their day, into a match winning lineup for English conditions.
And I’ll be surprised if anyone knows that right now.
Follow Paddy on Twitter @WarmingthePine
Build your own fantasy cricket team and put it to the test with Draftstars daily fantasy competitions. Pick your match, pick your team and watch the points roll in to take out cash prizes on each match. What are you really gambling with? Set a deposit limit.