EXCLUSIVE: Australian cricket selectors’ heads roll as Lord steps in

Australia’s disastrous tour of India is set to claim high-ranking casualties, with a ruthless clean-out of the National Selection Panel imminent.

While no public announcement has been made, The Roar’s exclusive investigation can reveal that four of the current five selectors are on the way out.

Chairman John Inverarity and selector Andy Bichel are set to lose their jobs, while national coach Mickey Arthur and captain Michael Clarke will be demoted as the panel again becomes a three-man operation.

Former Test wicketkeeper Rod Marsh will be alone in keeping his position, though no announcement was planned for another month, to let the Indian dust settle.

In a shock move, veteran cricket manager, journalist, and former Roar columnist David Lord has been privately offered the top job by Cricket Australia chief James Sutherland.

Lord gave notice to this publication over a fortnight ago, with his final column appearing on Easter Saturday. Editorial staff were surprised at his request not to publicise his resignation.

Further suspicions were raised when Roar cricket scribe Kersi Meher-Homji spotted Lord dining with Cricket Australia chief James Sutherland in a small restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Willoughby. It seemed an unusually out-of-the-way locale for Sutherland to hold a meeting.

Initially Lord was evasive and non-committal when about his future plans. When pressed about the meeting with Sutherland, he claimed the two had met to discuss Lord’s public views on sports science. He later forwarded an email invitation from Sutherland to support this story.

That Lord is not a comfortable resident of the digital realm was revealed in spectacular fashion, as CA’s new man in waiting didn’t realise he was also forwarding the compacted chain of emails preceding the original message.

This not only included Lord’s request for a dummy message from Sutherland’s account, but discussions on the timeline of Lord’s availability, the timing of the upcoming dismissals, and Lord’s demand that the captain and coach be downgraded to reporting to the NSP in an advisory capacity.

A virulent critic of Inverarity’s selection regime, Lord’s campaign has in the end borne more spectacular fruit than he could ever have hoped.

In a series of increasingly cantankerous columns over the summer, Lord also slammed modern fitness and conditioning regimens. If his call to return to the simple methods of an earlier generation are heeded, Australia’s cricketers could find themselves lifting more slabs than weights.

“At the end of a day’s play there was no warm-down, straight into the shed and into the beers. Once they ran out, it was shower and paint the town red,” wrote Lord recently of fast bowlers like Dennis Lillee and Ray Lindwall.

“Their spare time wasn’t for the gym, it was to relax over a few beers. More accurately, a good few beers.”

These priorities are reflected in his preferences for colleagues on the NSP. In his correspondence with Sutherland, Lord advocated candidates including former all-rounder Andrew Symonds and pace icon Jeff Thomson, as well as lamenting that former prime minister Bob Hawke and Carlton spearhead Brendan Fevola did not have more of a cricketing background.

In the circumstances, Rod Marsh’s retention is unsurprising. He was named in a Lord column just a few weeks ago as “a no-nonsense player [who will] bring the same attitude to the selection table”.

Marsh’s one-time record for the number of beers drunk on an Australia-England flight would also have done him no harm in the eyes of the replacement chairman.

Neither Cricket Australia nor Sutherland has so far responded to The Roar’s enquiries. None of the recent decisions have been made public, and the current selectors themselves may not have been informed that their positions will be terminated.

In the absence of any official word, Sutherland’s private correspondence nonetheless praised Lord highly.

“To move forward, Australian cricket needs someone who is unafraid to make the unpopular decisions, untroubled by how they appear to others, and happy to stay their course even when nobody agrees with them,” wrote Sutherland.

“You are a thinker who knows that we can only take Australia to the future by keeping our eyes firmly fixed on the past.”

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(In the spirit of the day, this is indeed an April Fools Day joke. Thanks to all for enjoying it as much as we did.)