Oh dear. Shaun Marsh will now be padding up for the 2016-17 summer of cricket.
The likes of Mohammed Amir, Wahab Riaz, Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn will have a proverbial field day, opening a corridor of certainty for slips catching practice coming our way.
Not Marsh’s fault of course – any century overseas is a great effort.
But if he was selected due to his ability to score runs on the sub-continent, why wasn’t he at in the side at number six for the first Test?
On Sunday, Ronan O’Connell called out Rod Marsh, Mark Waugh, Andy Bichel and Trevor Hohns for their ‘horses for courses’ brain explosion for the dead rubber.
More damning however, this panel’s ongoing obsession with finding karma in team balance overlooks a fundamental strength of an Australian cricket’s team structure – we are at our best with six batsmen, a keeper, and four bowlers. Tried and true, like a classic 4-4-2 in football.
We have been chasing the all-rounder since Andrew Flintoff destroyed us in 2005, and it is time to put the dream to bed.
The experiment with Mitchell Marsh must end. Marsh has now played 18 Tests, with 28 innings, and produced two 50s and no hundreds, with an average of 24.62. He has 27 wickets at 36.22.
At the moment he is a handy wicket-taker, but not a strike bowler. He cannot bat in the top six on the proverbial ‘highways’ in Australia nor on foreign fields.
In theory, Marsh should be picked as the third seamer who can bat eight, but his numbers with the ball don’t stack up for this to be realised.
I was surprised Marsh was picked in the tour, let alone the team for the first Test. Then Moises Henriques was astoundingly called up.
To compound the shock for those who are still interested in the tour, the selectors then named both M Marsh and M Henriques for the third Test – both in the top six!
Henriques has played four Tests, and averages 26.67 (with two 50s in India), and two wickets at 77.5.
Unfortunately, I get the feeling Waugh may have been watching a few too many NSW shield games, as this selection puts a player with four first-class hundreds, over a career spanning more than a decade, in the top six of our premier side – and in conditions where we are already dropping the ball (so to speak).
As a New South Welshman I am proud to cheekily abide by the mantra that a strong NSW produces a strong Australian cricket team, but even I recognise this selection as madness.
The combined results to date? Marsh bowled ten wicketless overs for 45, and racked up his second Test 50 in his 28th innings. Henriques looked clueless with the bat and did not get tossed the ball, even with the extended Sri Lankan sixth-wicket partnership.
Throw in the mix the recently demoted Glenn Maxwell (three Tests, bat 13, ball 38), and we now look like England in the 1990s. The obsession with a dime-a-dozen batch of bits and pieces players. How Aussies laughed at the touring English sides featuring Mark Eahlam, Ronnie Irani and the like.
To give you a comparison with Marsh and Henriques, and how far Test expectations have fallen, Eahlam averaged 21 with the bat and 28 with the ball in his brief Test career.
Secondly, we threw away a wonderful opportunity to build our future top six with the 2015 A team tour to India, which we won 1-0 from two matches. Cameron Bancroft was a stand-out, with Peter Handscomb also having a strong innings in one game.
Why were both Bancroft and Handscomb (or one at a minimum) not part of the touring team to Sri Lanka?
Finally, there was no reward for performance with the willow at domestic level over the 2015-16 summer. Of the top players, Bancroft and Handscomb featured prominently again in the runs, with young tyros Kurtis Patterson and Travis Dean also having strong seasons. Critically, all are under 25.
To reiterate my comment regarding the A tour, surely one or two of these guys should have been considered to tour.
With players demonstrating they can perform in spin-friendly conditions overseas, and back it up with more-than-solid domestic seasons, they should be automatic call-ups for a national tour to a country committed to producing rank turners.
Thus back to the DRS. The selectors have wasted their reviews on three counts: firstly, continued investment in patchy all-rounders. Secondly, non-selection of those who performed well with the bat in India on the 2015 A tour. And thirdly, ignoring domestic form and runs on the board from the Shield.
On the field, two unsuccessful reviews and you lose the opportunity to right the wrongs of a howler. This selection panel has made too many of their own to be treated seriously in building our next champion XI.
Bugs
Guest
Agreed that Voges time is up. Has struggled when under sustained heavy pressure. If the best of the current bunch doesn't cut the mustard, choose the young'un with the most potential and stick solid with them, ala S.Waugh. Henriques should never have toured, we should have picked a squad with 3 spinners, and I doubt Holland would have been the third if they did. The selectors botched it. The current mob replaced the guys who picked Quiney, Cowan, Doolan et al - it shouldn't be that hard to be an improvement, but they really gave outdoing their predecessors a shake on this tour.
ChrisB
Guest
Best comment. Ever. So many people here claim to have all the answers. Remember all those clamoring for Khawaja to be chosen as the second coming of batting genius. Or all those who criticised Starc for years. You can only make informed judgement post-event, and probably post-career really. The rest is just guesswork, informed or otherwise. My own 10c worth, until we get our pitches back to the variety they used to have, nothing will change and our batsmen will continue to look like rockstars till their is the slightest hint of spin or swing or lateral movement and then they'll fall apart. Until this is sorted it won;t matter who you'll pick. The other issue is our players seem to have developed an intense seige mentality about playing on the sub-continent. Don;t know how you try to break that, but we did once before (think of the Border-Simpson era). Surely the vast quantity of sports psychologists and other time wasters can conjure up something to sort this?
ChrisB
Guest
I think this gets to the heart of the problem. Our domestic wickets and the lack of variety amongst them in the recent era Perhaps some of the averages are a little inflated?
Buzzwah
Guest
Surely the Big Bash and it's flooding of the summer scheduling has to be apportioned some of the blame!! Also drop in pitches on just about all of the major grounds in Australia - they are not the true cricket wickets of yesteryear that would otherwise encourage technique and patience from batsmen? and line and length from bowlers!! I'm not convinced how long the selectors will choose to carry Vogues as our key middle order bat either. He's overachieved to date which will probably make it more difficult to show him the door. I have a sinking feeling that his average will be like North Melbourne's season.....great out of the gates (with a good draw/opponents) and then he'll start to fade.
Pope Paul VII
Guest
Indeed Paul they should
Pope Paul VII
Guest
That was just a quick grab. Pretty sure I can dig out more Ted Dexter, Muddy Nasar, Hick, Blewett, Carl Blooper, Ponting, Martyn, Quiney (seriously), Root, Wade ( lol ), Stacky. Why wouldn't a batsman practice bowling just for a bit of fun? Especially in the fully professional age. Joe and Ussie certainly can't bat at the moment. Ussie even got Sanga out once.
Bakkies
Guest
Warner and Smith can bowl 'leg spin'
JohnB
Guest
And just noting that Marsh out for 9 off 4 balls in the circumstances they were facing isn't doing much to back up his supporters, regardless of how good the ball that got him may or may not have been.
JohnB
Guest
None currently
vrx
Guest
The selectors' biggest mistake was and is Adam Voges. In 2015, at the expense of Shaun Marsh, he was picked because his experience was supposed to tell in English conditions. That was an utter failure and should have been the end of it. Instead Lehmann, after purging Haddin, needed experience after Clarke went too. So Voges got another go, on flat tracks at home against NZ. Although he was plundering on the roads, in the Adelaide test when the pressure was on he did not contribute. Ironically, the Aussies were rescued there by S Marsh (and by an umpire). Then in Wellington, an umpire intervened again and Voges scored a double century after being bowled on 7 by a legal delivery. He comes to the sub-continent as a senior batsman with a 90+ average and disappointed again, playing pre-meditated reverse sweeps a la Glenn Maxwell. Can you believe transforming from Bradman to Maxwell in 2 games? Despite this, in the 3rd test, instead of dropping/resting him, the selectors continue with his services at the expense of UK and Burns. Voges is trying his best - this thread is about the selectors and my issue is with them. Instead of Voges, we could have had Handscomb or Bancroft on this tour. Over the past 2 years, we could have had the best of S Marsh (since Dec 2014, he has scored 754 runs at 47 with 2 100s and 1 99, despite being asked to open and being sent in for the massacre at Nottingham). Now we won't know what we will miss following the decision around UK/Burns.
Annoyedofit
Guest
And Burns has spent those season averaging over 50. Better than overrated Bancroft
Rob JM
Guest
Isn't there enough queenslanders who cant play spin in the test team already!
Paul D
Roar Guru
Sachin Tendulkar & Sourav Ganguly should be in that list too.
Lancey5times
Guest
And if we look at the Aussies in your list we have 8 guys over a playing period of 35 years. Maybe the gun bat who bowls is as rare as the genuine all-rounder?
Lancey5times
Guest
Smith seems to lack confidence at this early stage of his captaincy. It is evident in his continual use of spin (because it is the subcontinent and that's what you do here), his underbowling of Hazlewood and Marsh and also his lack of faith in his own bowling. In part the last point is that he knows he will go for a few and the runs are not on the board to allow him to buy a wicket. The more he bowls however the more balance he could bring on future subcontinent tours
Lancey5times
Guest
I think the lack of the gun bat that bowls is down to the limited amount of red ball cricket played at domestic level by the top players these days and it is not just restricted to the incumbents. Remember when Usman was 12th/13th man for a summer and basically didn't play any cricket? These guys just don't play enough cricket in a non-consequential environment to hone these skills. Also the flat wickets in Australia don't give a part-timer much of a realistic chance of being effective so are not considered by captains as a go-to option (with this in mind why would a player practice their part-time seamers?) On your first point, that's not poor team balance. When you have an all-rounder (or two), don't bowl them much or at all, lose and find yourself chasing a deadrubber, that's just poor captaincy.
Eski
Guest
Don Considering Lynn has managed 40 fc games in 6 years I doubt it In fact when was the last time Lynn managed a full fc season from memory it certainly hasn't been the last two seasons
Rocko
Roar Guru
Lank - if they are good enough by all means - but they haven't been used seriously in this series to hold their spot. What about Steve Smith as your third spinner in the series as a change-up?
Rocko
Roar Guru
I do support the horses for courses mentality - but you don't need to structure a side with speculative pics to produce results. My argument is, if you need to pick specialist players, tap into the recent A tours for players who have done well in similar conditions, and who have backed it up in domestic cricket.
Pope Paul VII
Guest
This is a fair point Lanc. Although it's debatable what the point of allrounders is if you don't bowl them ( Moises ) or don't need them ( Delhi ). It also makes me wonder what happened to the batting maestro come part time bowler? Walters, GS Chappell, IVA Richards, Gooch, Waugh, Waugh, Clarke , Lehmann, Bevan, The Kat. Burns, Khawaja and all the young dudes would help themselves no end if they could do handy and accurate straight breakers or medium pace. Were only talking 10 - 15 over a day probably.