Australian stars to flood domestic cricket competition

I think the cancellation of the Bangladesh tour was an absolute blessing for the Aussies. They can now prepare for New Zealand in the conditions they will be playing in come the Australian Test summer. Besides, Australian cricket is in a better state when national stars such as Johnson and co. are a part of the domestic scene in some capacity. It brings a lot more fanfare and competition to what I might dub 'the audition for national selection'!

Nice post mate.

Yeah, they do look good. No Cozzie though, he's still not in good enough nick IMO.

Hope CA XI improves though. They received a pasting from NSW. Starc must have been unplayable with 6-25. Was impressed with the three young openers Head (202), Bancroft (176) and Maddinson (108). Smith, S. Marsh, Ferguson and Dunk showed why they are good ODI batsmen with centuries. QLD are struggling without Khawaja and Lynn. Was a batsmen's day with only Starc, Fekete and Paris making an impression with the ball.

a trio of thrillingly tight games today

I in no way intended to denigrate talented young cricketers. No batsman is complete. Even Bradman was struggled with spin on occasion and obviously was limited by bodyline tactics. Ponting liked to move his feet towards off stump early in his innings. Watson likes to plonk his front pad in front of the stumps. Early in his career Michael Clarke was regularly getting out by hitting the ball in the Air through point. People will only improve if they can admit their flaws. To me WA's middle order as constructed last year is flawed. you disagree. I provided both statistical and anecdotal evidence as to why i believe my opinion is correct. I even provided a reasoned well explained argument on how improvements could be made. You Clearly disagree. yet rather then provide alternative evidence you attack my classification of players weakness's Ultimately i hope these young guys play well. but by putting them all together in the middle order. WA Cricket isn't helping any of them. If the experienced top order bats well, the developing players will get less time in the middle then what they need to improve. Yet if the top order fails they will be stranded against a fired up bowling attack without an experienced batsman to act as a safety net. Both are bad options for developing cricketers. PS I do think under 23's games are stupid. They are 23. they are men entering their athletic primes and should be playing against the best competition they are capable of facing. They should be good enough to play for Australia or Learning in Shield/County/IPL tournaments across the planet. Not giving the national selectors an ego boost by playing another underage team. At 23 you aren't the Future. you are the Present

Just correcting your silliness. Turner captained an Oz u23 side last year...not a schoolboy side. You're only following c ricket in the newspaper, it seems. If you want to denigrate young players do it with some knowledge of Australian cricket.

Don. I don't know why you are taking this so personally. Mitch Marsh is 23. most reasonalbe cricket fans would hardly consider any cricketer that age to be the complete package. As a developing player Marsh has flaws. Even the greatest players ever have flaws. it shouldn't be a huge deal. Comparing Marsh's best stretch to Vogues was in response to Ronan's comment of "Over the past two years, M. Marsh has made just under 1500 FC runs at an average of 47. Over the same period he has averaged 27 with the ball. Awesome stats." Averaging 47 especially since over 500 of those runs came from 3 innings that were mostly scored in boundaries,is hardly awesome for a batsman. It just shows that Marsh is an incredibly talented batsman who can destroy a first class attack when he is on song. the Bowling numbers are also good but nothing special. when looked at in isolation. Which they should be. No one is best questioning his place in WA's side. When Assessing a players role how their individual skill fits within the team context is what is important. Mentioning Turner's batting with the youth team. Yawn. so he could hit a few schoolboys for runs. Its a positive sign sure. but it doesn't make him qualified to anchor a middle order of other inexperienced batsmen. WA's top order is pretty great and they won't often fall early. and even if they do the bowlers will be good enough to make a game of things. but to suggest they bat down to 8 or 9 isn't supported by any statistical evidence. A much better batting order would be Klinger, Bancroft, S Marsh, Turner Vogues, M Marsh Whiteman Agar. It's less top heavy, Mixes your tempo players with the power hitters and always assures a younger player will be paired with an experienced batsman until after the 5thh wicket falls But

That is just a crazy analysis. Because a big man hits boundaries, he's a tonker but when he doesb't he can't turn over the strike. WA rarely were in trouble last season with Voges, Shaun Marsh and Klinger batting so well. When Whiteman, Agar or Turner went in, it was usually in that rush for bonus points before a declaration. I notice you don't mention Turner's nagnificent batting captaining the Australian Youth team last year. Then you compare Marsh's average...he played one Shield innings of 2no with Voges' season of averaging over 100. Why?

He could get away from anyone.

A few players such as Bosisto for WA were dropped and are now in the CA XI, most of whom are 22 and younger.

Matador Cup squads as of October 2 NSW New squad: Steve Smith (c), Sean Abbott, Doug Bollinger, Ryan Carters, Ed Cowan, Moises Henriques, Nathan Lyon, Nic Maddinson, Peter Nevill, Steve O’Keefe, Kurtis Patterson, Gurinder Sandhu, Mitchell Starc, Shane Watson. QLD New squad: Peter Forrest (c), Cameron Boyce, Joe Burns, Ben Cutting, Luke Feldman, Chris Hartley, Charlie Hemphrey, James Hopes, Usman Khawaja*, Simon Milenko, Michael Neser, Nathan Reardon, Billy Stanlake, Mark Steketee. *Marnus Labuschagne (injury replacement). Khawaja minor injury. back late in the comp. Tas New squad: George Bailey (c), Alex Doolan (vc), Jackson Bird, Xavier Doherty, Jake Doran, Ben Dunk, James Faulkner, Andrew Fekete, Evan Gulbis, Hamish Kingston, Dominic Michael, Tim Paine, Sam Rainbird, Clive Rose. Vic New squad: Matthew Wade (c), Scott Boland, Dan Christian, Aaron Finch, Peter Handscomb, John Hastings, Jon Holland, Glenn Maxwell, Clint McKay, James Pattinson, Rob Quiney, Peter Siddle, Marcus Stoinis, Cameron White. WA New squad: Adam Voges (c), Shaun Marsh (vc), Ashton Agar, Cameron Bancroft, Tom Beaton, Jason Behrendorff, William Bosisto, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Marcus Harris, Michael Klinger, Simon Mackin, Mitchell Marsh, Joel Paris, Jhye Richardson, Ashton Turner, Andrew Tye, Jon Wells, Sam Whiteman. SA Squad: Travis Head (c), Tom Andrews, Tom Cooper, Callum Ferguson, Jake Lehmann, Tim Ludeman, Joe Mennie, Gary Putland, Kane Richardson, Sam Raphael, Alex Ross, Daniel Worrall, Nick Winter, Adam Zampa. Cricket Australia XI New squad: Will Bosisto (c), Alex Gregory (vc), James Peirson, Ryan Lees, Marcus Harris, Seb Gotch, Matthew Short, Jack Wildermuth, James Bazley, Liam Hatcher, Mitch Swepson, Hilton Cartwright, Riley Ayre, Matthew Dixon.

Yes. In my day I tried to mark Peter Haslehurst. I learned more in one game on him than a season of doing well.

Admittedly my research was a little rough. Just went to his cricinfo profile page. What site do you use to find these comprehensive stats? Again. I never complained about Mitch Marsh's overall run tally. 47 is hardly awesome. Adam Vogues averaged over 100 in Shield Cricket last season. That's awesome. 47 is acceptable. As for his bowling. This is a discussion about his batting so its irrelevant. I'm not questioning his place in the side. He deserves to be there. There is just little evidence to show that he is the type of reliable batsman that you could build a middle order around. Here's some more research Mitch Marsh vs Essex. Runs 169 SR 89.89 Runs From Boundries (RFB) 110 %Runs From Boundries 65 Mitch Marsh vs India A Runs 211 SR 71.76 RFB 144 %RFB 68 Mitch Marsh vs Pakistan Runs 87 SR 72.05 RFB 58 %RFB 67 Marsh's Last 2 Shield seasons he averaged 37.92* (2013/14) where 324 of his 496 Runs were from boundaries (65%) and in the 2014/15 season he scored a grand total of 2 unbeaten runs for WA. Due to commitments with the national team. So in Mitch Marsh's most Successful stretches as a batsman he seems to score roughly 65+% of his runs from boundaries. Which means he's also facing a lot of dot balls. Again there is nothing wrong with this. It just means that Marsh needs to be paired with a batsman who will rotate the strike and not allow things to get bogged down. The Ashton's and Whiteman may be able to do that but all are still young and unproven. Last year Whiteman averaged 32 in Shield Cricket and 24 in the matador cup Agar averaged 30 in Shield and 57 in the Matador cup (thanks to being not out twice in 4 total innings Turner Averaged 4 in Shield Cricket and 89 in the matador cup (He scored 89 total runs with a high score of 29) That's hardly a middle order to be boasting about compared to NSW, Victoria, even Queensland. * Where he had the 31st best average of any batsman in the country, and the 24th most runs scored. Not very impressive. especially since its his best season. Overall for WA he averages 25. and for the test team 28. ** PS His test cricket high score of 87 was vs Pakistan in the UAE. If your going to correct my facts at least get your corrections right *** Its also worth mentioning that Marsh wasn't batting No4 in most of the games where he made huge scores.

Don, Rimmington has been sterling for the Warriors since he joined them three years or so ago. I'm not sure that a real youngster is a gain over him. Anyway, I'm most interested in seeing whether Paris and the Dorf are still a deadly duo and if they can stay on the park. They've both looked extremely good in short formats so far in their careers.

Exactly. I played first grade hockey in Perth as a youngster and used to come up against - and play alongside - players who played for the state and Aus all the time. Loved it even when I got creamed which was frequently!

His last 9 FC games would include 2 centuries in England and a double century against India A. He had the 3 highest average (45) on the England tour after Rogers and Smith. A double century in a game when Australia was 6/48 is not at all bad. The other WA "tailender", Whiteman got 150 in the same game and circumstances. Marsh also scored a Test 87 in the Windies.

In his last 9 FC matches Mitch Marsh has Zero Hundereds. His 3 top Scores were 64, 40* Both vs England in ODI's Where his strike rate was well over 100. The other innings was a patient 68 against Northamptonshire. Yet of those 68 Runs 50 were scored in boundaries. When you score over 70% of your Runs in boundaries. That's Tonking. Saying Mitch Marsh tonks wasn't meant to be an insult. Lots of very successful batsmen do it, and its very necessary in limited overs cricket to have batsmen who can score quickly. However teams need to have a balance between boundary hitters and guys who can rotate the strike and control the tempo of the innings. Western Australia doesn't have a proven player who can play the tempo role outside of their top 4. (Assuming Bancroft gets to play) So they will be vulnerable if they loose early wickets. Marsh at 23 is progressing nicely, and has handled the opportunities he has been given quite well. However he still has a lot to learn about batting. (Again not an insult most cricketers aren't complete well rounded players at this stage of their careers) If Australia and WA are serious about Mitch Marsh as a long term test and ODI Cricketer. then they should be placing him in positions to nurture and develop his talent. (Ideally at 5 with good batsmen at 4 and 6 aka the Andrew Symonds method)