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Why is it that two or three days before any Australian international cricket match the selectors hold a press conference announcing the team or, worse still, justifying their selections?
Press conferences for the national selection panel (NSP) seem to last longer and feel more hostile than question time in Parliament.
It seems to be a recent phenomenon, but an annoying and completely unnecessary phenomenon nonetheless. The side effect of this is that the entire nation now seems to have some vested interest in the makeup of the XI and the selectors now seem more important to a match than the actual players.
Attempting to establish its roots is tricky. I would estimate that the phenomenon began during the Andrew Hilditch era.
I select this period for two closely related reasons: firstly, my relative youth restricts most of my cricket selections memories to the 90s. Secondly, it was in the Andrew Hilditch era that Australian cricket began its fall from the top.
I honestly don’t recall much airtime being given to the selection panel in the mid 90s and early 2000s. It’s probably because Australia was a very dominant team, selection changes were rare, and the obvious increase in team stability lead to the NSP keeping a very low profile.
Trevor Hohns and Allan Border popped up from time to time, announced the team, announced a change and that was that. Australia would continue to win cricket games.
It was only in the Hilditch era when Australia started losing and increased attention turned to the selectors as the only people who could stem the flow, or find a permanent replacement for Shane Warne.
Hilditch initially thought he was going to have a cushy job of watching state games and scouting new talent all day long but was suddenly thrust into the spotlight and having to justify selections.
In fairness to the Australian public, Hilditch, in a nutshell can be summed us thus: Cricket is better for his departure.
But, I digress. The original point is that despite the incompetence of a selector like Hilditch, or the bizarre policies of a John Inverarity panel, the NSP do not need to be justifying to the public why they have selected/omitted players.
They are not elected officials, they are not accountable to the public. They are accountable to the Cricket Australia hierarchy, just like Hilditch was.
The only reason the public expect to hear from the selectors is because the Australian cricket team is not dominant anymore and we want it to be. Unfortunately, it is not an valid excuse.
Winning or losing, the selectors do not have to front up before each match to justify their selections to the public. It creates more confusion and conjecture from professional and amateur pundits (guilty as charged) and inevitably makes it much harder for the panel to do their job.
Let’s just let them slip back into the shadows, like it was back in the day. If CA is unhappy with them, they can sack them.
It’s just bloody annoying to see John Inverarity on TV more than the actual game!
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