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Where to for cricket in Australia? Deep inside CA’s bunkers is a whiteboard listing the myriad questions facing Australian cricket with seemingly few answers. Scheduling? Rotation? Khawaja? Watson?
Having resisted the urge to write this article a million times over the summer, the thumb-twiddling associated with holidays has finally won out.
Scheduling is an issue that has become tiresome in its debate, but strap yourself in because so has the rest of what’s under discussion.
Test cricket is like a sitcom. You love it, partially because if you get something better to do and miss an episode you haven’t really missed much. Try missing an episode of Lost and making sense of the next one. Actually try watching any episode of Lost and making sense of it.
White-ball cricket is a meaningless money spinner. I don’t hate it, but I don’t care for it in the slightest.
This would all change if I were boss of Cricket Australia though. CA needs the white ball, so we’re not going to reinvent the wheel here, but it can be simplified. Internationally we must play at least five home Tests a year – either two three-match series or a single five-match series.
The last two Tests are Boxing Day and New Year’s, so get the other games in before them. It makes sense the Sheffield Shield runs alongside Test cricket, and it makes sense the Ryobi Cup runs alongside the Shield. So we run Test cricket, Sheffield Shield and Ryobi Cup until December 31.
Here comes our first big doozy – do we wind up the Sheffield Shield when we wind up Test matches, with a Boxing Day final perhaps? Or do we need the Shield to run from February-March for overseas tour selections? If the tour leaves before the Shield gets a chance to resume, then perhaps we don’t need it post New Year.
White ball cricket is for kids. Or people without the perspective to realise if it’s not a World Cup nobody cares. Play the Big Bash in January over four weeks. It’s school holidays, people have time off work and its generally great early evening weather. It would make sense to make that period free of international cricket, but CA needs to maintain a free-to-air position, so play three 50-over matches against the touring Test nation as early in January as possible.
All players who have played in the last two Tests could be released to their families for the first two weeks of January. It’s a crap idea, but at least it makes sense as opposed to the dartboard formula of “informed player management” used currently.
Get the ODIs out of the way before the BBL finals start, and explain why Channel 9 wouldn’t want full strength BBL finals with meaningful Champions League places up for grabs on their screens in late January.
Quite simply, after January, who cares? Souths play the Return to Redfern in the second week of February, and there is the All Stars game, so for me and I’m assuming you too, it’s footy season and cricket is forgotten about. Except of course, when I spend hours writing articles on the subject.
I imagine CA will schedule another ODI series of made-for-TV cricket, perhaps a three-game Australia versus Australia A series?
Too much oxygen has been wasted on the subject of rotation. John Inverarity and Pat Howard, I’m looking at you. Quite simply you pick the best 11 fit cricketers for meaningful cricket. In 1996 Michael Jordan played every game of basketball for the Chicago Bulls. Champions don’t rest and they sure as hell don’t want to.
Every Test match is precious, particularly while we’re not clean sweeping series in three days, so if a player is fit he should be picked. Rest and rotate in the coloured clothes but not with the sacrosanct Baggy Green. Moving on!
Usman Khawaja. Three thousand people opened this thread because I mentioned his name. Yawn. A good, solid bat but The Don reincarnate he is not. Deserved a run out in Sydney and has earnt ‘next cab off the rank’ stripes but needs big scores when given an opportunity.
Shane Watson. The world’s most over-rated red ball cricketer. Yawn. Edging towards the last chance saloon for Watto in the Test side. Chapelli says he is perhaps our second-best bat, which I can live with, but his record doesn’t reflect this. At Test level you live off your record, not your class, poise or potential. The Australian cricket side is judged on a currency of runs and wickets, Watson needs more.
To complete the liquorice all-sorts cricket discussion I’ll have a crack at selecting the First Test side to play India. Keep in mind this is the side I believe will be picked, not what I would select. I’m not a selector so the fact Steve O’Keefe is a better cricketer than half our touring side is irrelevant.
Cowan
Warner
Hughes
Watson
Clarke
Wade
Henriques
Pattinson
Siddle
Doherty
Lyon
Maxwell (12th man)
I wasn’t around on the Roar when Cowan hit four consecutive first-class tons to get his Test spot, but I imagine the familiar Usman Khawaja, Joe Burns, and Alex Doolan fan club anointed him the saviour of Australian cricket back then?
Cowan has done enough and will be selected, while Glen Maxwell is a great bloke, good team man et al and has surely been selected on drink-mixing abilities, so he gets the nod ahead of Khawaja who has much to work on in those areas.
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