What is Fawad Ahmed's touring future?

Watson is the last person I'd want coming in when the chips were down. In the past Haddin has played that role well. His critics have been absolutely warranted. His form with runs and wickets is not of test standard since 2012.

Yep with you there. Much tougher than Watson. Not to mention Mitch is a far superior bowler.

You're pretty harsh on M Marsh there Jimmy. He's proving to be a pretty reliable batsman when times are tough.

Absolutely zero chance that watson will be replaced at all let alone by another bowler, let alone to another spinner! To go into a test match with only 5 recognised batsman, 1 being in his second test, and a wicketkeeper horrendously out of form would be ludicrous. Thankfully the selectors know better than public opinion to merely 'bank on the tail' getting runs. Despite being undoubtedly out of form in recent times with the bat, watson will be one of the first picked in the ashes in england. He has experience in england and on recent tours has actually performed well in those conditions albeit in different batting positions. Marsh will be an exciting prospect for the future however i am yet to see any of his stats trump watson (albeit in limited outings) his bowling average is over 100 and batting average is in the same range as watsons and has a significantly insuperior first class record. There is a case to be made following the ashes that watson should make way for some fresh legs in the test arena, however at this current moment the vilification he gets is unjustified and too often he is only viewed based purely on his batting. Watson rarely gets out for less than 20-30 so as not to put pressure on an out of form haddin and is consistently tying up ends with his bowling. All i know is that if australia are 4 down for not many in the ashes i know who id want to be coming in and it certainly isn't mitch marsh or brad haddin!

I think he was originally going to play that 1st test until rogers got ruled out which really changed the balance of the team

Either that or he would have provided a lot of loose stuff and got hit all over the park and let the pressure off. It's certainly possible Fawad could have had a similar impact to Bishoo, but it's hard to feel certain of it. Basically, Australia's strength is our fast bowling, so the selectors have to be totally convinced with the spinning options to ditch a quality fast bowler for a second main spinner, or that spinner has to put forward such a compelling case that they should be there instead of Lyon. The spin position and the keeping position are such tough ones. There is generally only one spot, meaning that it's very difficult to cover for someone who's struggling. As such, selectors tend to be very conservative and stick with the incumbent if they are doing a decent job unless someone comes along who's so clearly head and shoulders above everyone else that they just have to force their way in at the expense of the incumbent. It becomes a tough call. In the case of Lyon he's been reasonably solid, and you know what you are going to get, but he's not an attacking, match-winning sort of spinner in general in spite of that one Adelaide match. But the selectors have tried so many different spinners since Warne retired to see so many of them hammered out of the attack even in good spinning conditions. In some respects Lyon has been good, in others he's been lucky. He's come in at a time when there had been so many spinners tried that the call was to give someone an extended run and let them grow into the role, and he was in the right place at the right time, and has shown a lot of continual improvement. Plus we have to remember that in spinners terms he's still young. I'm pretty sure he is still younger than Graeme Swann was when he made his test debut.

And if Bell and Cook score 750+ series runs each and our batsman fold that's the only interesting outcome. Who's batting is worse. England don't have to bowl exceptionally well for our batsman to fold like deck chairs.

They do need to take a punt, but is that in their DNA? They're pretty risk-averse from my pt of view and would favour a long slow drawn out series where they aren;t flogged to one where they would risk losing to win.

Then allow me to elaborate. Once again David has made a completely unnecessary non-point. The Aussies win a test inside 3 days and are about to move to more pace friendly deck and he picks holes in the attack. He also states that Ahmed could slot straight in and replace Watson in the side (clearly a like for like swap with the seam bowling batting allrounder) before even bothering to explain this one. This is all while stating how brittle our batting line up is. There are a lot of real 'experts' that contribute articles on this site. I like hearing from them

David. Not sure how you can say his career "has become cloudy". It is the fact that he did not play was the reason spin did not play a major part in the victory in my view. We all saw what an impact a quality leggie had on the game. Feel certain Fawad would had made a similar impact had be played. He certainly would not have just held up an end. Being a wrist spinner who turns the ball both ways, Faz would have provided a far more testing examination of the Windies batsmen than the finger spinner Lyon..

Unnecessary comment.

One cricket article posted on The Roar today and it is by David Lord. I cannot begin to describe my disappointment

Lyon has a decent average against England, his more defensive style of bowling does compliment our attacking bowlers. having a spinner who is good enough to not be hit out of the attack creates pressure our fast bowlers can exploit. Using Ahmed is a do or die method.

I suspect that they won't be dissimilar to the wickets dished up for the NZ series. Put simply, good cricket wickets. Australia's bowling attack is looking very ominous, however the batting looks just as brittle if not more so than England's. Regarding Ahmed, he will probably have to get used to carrying drinks because Lyon offers good control for long periods allowing Australia to rotate their strike bowlers ie the quicks. Ahmed would probably offer a greater wicket taking threat than Lyon but less control, therefore Lyon wins out. England had the opportunity to blood a leggie in the Windies in Rashid, but were too conservative to do so, despite the clamour from all and sundry to do so. Instead Rashid is given his chance in the ODI arena against the ultra aggressive batting line up of the Kiwi's. I wish him all the luck, but it's a tough baptism. I do hope that England take a punt on Rashid for the Ashes as he is somewhat of an expert at mopping up the tail, something that England have struggled to do for some time, so he may get some tap from the batsmen but clean up the tail and seeing that Mo doesn't offer any control and not much wicket taking threat, it seems worth the risk to me.

agree, England do need to prepare pitches that can get a result. And Voges and Smith will absolutely dominate on roads.

Certainly haven't David. I think those three I mentioned will start the test series with Lyon but Starc will definitely play 2-3 tests over the series, especially if we go 1 or 2 tests up early. If Eng produce slow dull pitches as Sideline Comm suggested above, then I think Starc will be a straight swap for Johnson as his reverse swing skills will be invaluable. If they're fit, I don't see how you leave out H1 and H2 (as I will be calling them from now on) at all. **Edit - so in a nutshell, I don't think there's any conditions Eng can produce that we can't win in. We hold all the cards with the bowlers.

You might be right SC but at the end of the day, Eng need to win back the Ashes and those slow dull pitches won't let them do it. I honestly think they have to take a punt and go either green seamer or a bunsen burner. That being said, I'm sure the broadcasters/MCC/advertisers would like a slow dull pitch to make sure tests last as long as possible.

Australia has always done best on the back of the fast bowlers. Even when they went and won in India, they didn't pick an extra spinner, the fast bowlers did the trick. Someone pointed out in a comment on another story that in the warm-up game Fawad had some spells where he bowled pretty poorly, serving up a lot of long-hops and the like. When Australia has Clarke, Voges and Smith to call on in the spin stakes, to select a genuine second spinner you need to be confident that they can bowl consistent, give very few bad balls and keeping the pressure on the batsmen. If he has a performance that gives the impression he's a bit of a hit and miss bowler then it's easy to think that supplementing the spin of Lyon with the likes of Clarke, Voges and Smith might be almost as effective.

You'd say the money would be on neither. They won't be raging spinners or green seekers. Just flat, dull, slow pitches, that maybe ofter a bit of swing and variable bounce for Anderson and Broad, but basically are made for players like Cook to bat 2 days straight getting 200 off 500.