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Mr Inverarity, your choices are losing fans

Roar Guru
31st January, 2013
41

Dear Mr Inverarity. I’m a cricket fan, a lover of the game and now I’m close to considering myself as a former Australian supporter.

I fear there may be more in that very same boat soon, and the responsibility lies with you.

Yesterday you announced Australia’s squad for the upcoming tour of India. In said squad you named Xavier Doherty and Steve Smith because of their supposed spin bowling attributes.

I’m sure you also consider them to be great blokes or all-round good team guys. This is the final straw for a disappointed and now disenchanted fan like me who needs to see our best XI.

I hear you and your selection panel demand that players step up in the Sheffield Shield, the world’s toughest domestic first-class competition, and why not. It is the best way to see what players have got.

Yet when a player utterly fails in the perfect finishing school, they get picked for one of the toughest test tours in recent times. How on earth do you justify this?

Maybe this failure I’m alluding to is lost on you, so I’ll spell it out in simple terms and I’ll offer a logical alternative. India has promised rank turners and Doherty is more than likely to play.

Doherty’s first-class record reads like a bowler’s worst nightmare. In 51 first-class appearances to date, he has taken just 119 wickets at an absurdly abysmal average of 44.78. The fact he got a baggy green in the first place is a disgrace.

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But he’s developed as a player, I hear you say. He took a three-for in a one-day international and a T20, that should never count towards a test call up.

If you think it does, you are not fit to select Australia’s team. This season he has two shield wickets at 80 and now he’s got a recall? Please.

The selection of Doherty is an absolute farce. Equally as concerning is the exclusion of Australia’s best spinner, New South Wales captain Steve O’Keefe.

He is the only Australian spinner with a bowling record that actually looks like that of a bowler. Of all the candidates, his bowling record is miles ahead of the chasing pack.

He’s the only serious contender with a bowling average under 30 in first-class cricket (which should be an unwritten prerequisite for consideration).

O’Keefe adds huge value with his lower order batting, something Doherty certainly doesn’t bring to the table.

Not only this, but O’Keefe, being captain of NSW, has exceptional leadership skills and is a fantastic team man – something you bash on about far too much.

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So why have you not picked O’Keefe? How can you possibly justify Doherty’s selection over the exceptional case put forward by O’Keefe?

The next of your decisions in my firing line is the selection of Steve Smith. You said yourself that he’s been batting well this season without making a big score. Come again? Are runs over-rated all of a sudden?

It’s no coincidence that Smith is touted and mocked for being Australia’s ‘specialist fielder’.

An opinion like that, broadly expressed across the board, doesn’t come to fruition out of nothing. There is certainly a hard hitting home truth to it.

He certainly isn’t anywhere near being a test match bowler and he is yet to show the application and technique to handle batting in Test cricket, evidenced by his performance in the Sri Lanka ODI series.

Now to your delusional obsession with creating a test match winning all-rounder. We haven’t got an all-rounder of that quality, so why should we be handing out baggy greens for the sake of having a guy there who isn’t good enough to be a batsman, and isn’t good enough to be a bowler.

You cannot manufacture these sorts of players, they’re a luxury you make the most of when you’ve got them. The type of bits and pieces all-rounder you want in the side was a comical feature of the ’90s English Ashes sides we used to laugh at. How times have changed.

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Your one job is to pick the best 11 players in Australia. I can guarantee any casual observer will tell you that you’re failing miserably.

Not all of them would be able to do your job, but the serious cricket fans among us, I believe, could do a better job than you.

My preferred side is Warner, Watson, Hughes, Khawaja, Clarke, and young Joe Burns, who looks a future batting star for Australia, as our batting unit.

Wade is our keeper for the next decade and his place is unquestionable. Steve O’Keefe, Siddle, Pattinson and Lyon are a bowling attack more than capable of taking 20 wickets in India.

A flat wicket might mean the inclusion of Starc whose left arm variation and swing adds another dynamic to the attack. Can you tell me why your team is better than mine? I’d like to hear it if you can.

Australia faces its toughest 12 months in recent memory. We play three must-win series. There is no way in the world that Xavier Doherty and Steve Smith can ever be part of a world beating team, and that’s the sort of team we need to be putting together.

By picking second rate players you are distancing us, the fans, and the ones who watch the TV advertising and dish out our money for the ticket admissions which pay your salary.

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I don’t want to support a team of bits and pieces cricketers. You have picked a team including an opening batsman who isn’t even close to the best domestic players in the country in Ed Cowan and a spin bowler who wouldn’t play a test for any other country in the world.

I was a dedicated Australian cricket fan, but you’ve lost me. I’m now going for the West Indies, at least they’re cool.

Regards,

TheGenuineTailender

*Footnote – James Sutherland: after Inverarity resigns, I’m more than happy to take his place as chairman of selectors.

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