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Mark Waugh is an ideal national selector

Mark Waugh was just as tough as his brother to remove at the crease. (AFP PHOTO/Greg WOOD).
Expert
1st May, 2014
49
1202 Reads

Providing it doesn’t affect his television commitments, Mark Waugh would be the perfect replacement for John Inverarity if the current chairman of selectors decides to call it a day.

Inverarity, 70, has been chairman of the panel since October 2011, and his contract expires on June 30.

No doubt he will take all the credit for Australia returning to the world number one ranking in both Tests and ODIs, when the accolades must go to national coach and co-selector Darren Lehmann.

He’s the one who engineered the 5-0 Ashes win over England, and the 2-1 success over the previous world number one South Africa.

Lehmann will remain a selector in his capacity of national coach with former paceman Andy Bichel, leaving Rod Marsh to be elevated to the chair, in a major bonus.

But Mark Waugh is the story.

He does such a great job on television, where he’s a visionary and a clear thinker, and it’s in cricket’s best interests he stays in that role.

But if being a national selector doesn’t interfere with television, Waugh could have the best of both worlds and do cricket in Australia a power of good.

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It’s also important that selecting Waugh shuts the door on former chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns making a comeback since his retirement in early 2006.

Better known as “Hatchet Hohns”, he ended the careers of Waugh, Michael Slater, and Ian Healy and stripped Steve Waugh of his ODI captaincy.

Australian cricket needs a hatchet man selector like a hole in the head.

With Marsh in the chair, and Bichel, Lehmann, and Waugh completing the panel, Australian cricket would be in the very best of hands.

But there’s still one part of the Argus Review that needs to be thrown out.

Michael Clarke resigned as a selector once he realised being both Australian captain and selector was untenable. That was one of three Argus suggestions that were wrong from the start.

Another was the rotation policy, that Lehmann dismantled that as soon as he took on the coaching job.

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And the third was that the national selectors, apart from the chairman, would only be part-time.

In a job as expansive as being a national selector, where careers are in the mix, there’s no room for part-time selectors. It’s a full-time job.

So when Cricket Australia name the four-man panel, hopefully the governing body will correct the Argus Review’s part-time decision.

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