Smith's brilliance can't hide Aaron Finch's lacklustre form

OK I am suitably humbled. Now get into the SS and let the good times roll.

I do realise that you need five bowlers. Your rambling explanation does nothing to address my point that this batting lineup with Bailey at 4 and Marsh at 5 looks brittle. I would rarely select either in the top 5 and certainly not both. As for getting the balance right, Khawaja at 4, Head (or whoever) at 5 and Marsh at 6 looks much more balanced and stronger to me. The other thing you can do is play Marsh as your 4th bowler, have him at 7, Wade at 8. Simon O'Donnell played many games for Australia and rarely batted in the top 6. If, of course you can find another batting all rounder to squeeze out 10 overs with Head.

cummins is overrated warner should be dropped people who say finch should be the test opner are on drugs MacGee is in line for the 3rd ODI and the T20 glory days n janurary and the big bash league corn rider

You get a very different balance in the team when you are talking about a more normal keeper at the 7 sort of position. When we had Gilchrist opening, that instantly changed the balance around that sort of point. You then have your batting allrounder at 7 and suddenly the batting lineup looks a lot stronger. That's what SA get with QDK at the moment. We don't have that, so we have Wade coming in at 7 and the batting allrounder coming in at 6. Looks weaker because it is. But it's about the best you can do with what you've got. You need to have at least 5 bowlers. So with the keeper at 7, it means you have to get 10 overs out of your top 6. And one thing that the modern ODI game has done is basically show that you can no longer get away with real part-timers. They need to actually be decent bowlers. So the bottom end of the top 6 is as strong as you can make it with players you can get 10 decent overs out of (whether that's from one or two players). When we had Watson opening the batting in ODI's and being a quality 5th bowler, that worked well for the balance also. It's hard to find that balance with the players that are currently available.

I guess that's at the centre of my point / opinion. I don't think the lower middle order starts at 4. With the lineup from Sunday that's how it looked. Bailey batting at 6 is a lot different to him coming in at 4. Marsh batting at 6 or 7 is a lot different to him coming in at 5. I don't think they're genuine 4 or 5 bats in any way. By selecting them you're almost certainly relying on your top three to make big runs to protect Bailey and Marsh until later in the innings to make quick runs. And that's exactly how it worked out. I'm not really talking about 'what-ifs'. Head and Wade played great knocks at 6 and 7 which is where in the lineup they should be. But at the moment we have (to my mind) number 6 and 7 batsmen coming in at 4 and 5. You're right though, it is only one game but I hold the same concern if the batting lineup looks the same next time round. As I said, I'd feel much more comfortable with Khawaja at 4.

If only they could pick this for an ODI or t20 side, plenty of power hitting and a great fast bowling attack. 1.Warner 2.Khawaja 3.Smith (c) 4.Lynn 5.Handscomb (wk) 6.Maxwell 7.Cutting 8.Faulkner 9.Starc 10.Cummins 11.Hazlewood

Big fan of Cartwright, really hope they get him into the team for the third game if we wrap up the series today.

Khawaja in for Finch & Faulkner in for Marsh thanks.

Good point Chris. The fact that hes still 23 will help prolong his pace as well. Andy Roberts always used to say "pick em young when they are quick, cos it wont last for long". Would love to see how effective Cummins would be in the whites. Feel time is running out for Pattinson which is a shame. His start to test cricket in 2011/12 looked so promising. He was even being touted as the new leader of the pace attack.

Sounds familiar Ronan, deja vu to 12 months ago. Let's just hope when we get to India he doesn't fail immediately so they the selectors don't flick him after a couple of digs....

My understanding was Khawaja was left out of the ODI side so he could play the upcoming round of shield cricket and focus on the Pakistan series. I think we should stick with Finch, he has shown the ability to make hundreds and anchor the innings.

Hard to look at the lower middle order and say that it would struggle to get Australia to 200 if the top order had crumbled to be 6/90. That would probably be the case most of the time. We can't be looking at a single match and talk like "we can't have Smith continue to carry the team all the time". If we had three matches in this series and Smith basically was the only batsman to score any decent runs then we could say that. But people are talking like that from one game. Head got a 50, Wade came out and smacked a good late order innings, and Starc finished it off nicely with a couple of boundaries in the last over. So there was some support there. Sure there's plenty of "what-if's". There always is. If Warner didn't dab that one onto his stumps he might have gone on to make a big hundred himself and Australia might have made 350+. But he didn't, and they didn't.

That could be awesome. Just need Maxwell to get his act together and become a quality off-spinning allrounder at test level, and then we can pick the four pronged pace attack with Maxi as the spinner. I do fear for Pattinson though. His last comeback and re-injury was a bad one. Because he basically came back with a remodelled action, but really struggled with it, then pretty much switched back to bowling how he had previously, found some success but then re-injured himself all over again. And he's a few years older than Cummins, at a point where you'd hope he'd be able to have got past these injuries and be able to stay on the park consistently for a while. Unfortunately it just happens to some. Shane Bond was NZ's big one. He was really good, really quick and really injured a lot to the point where he had a very abbreviated career. If he could have stayed on the park he could well have been an all-time great. He really had something special, but just couldn't get the body to work. Hope we don't end up looking back on guys liike Cummins and Pattinson in the same way.

I think the big point with Cummins pace, and why people are a bit excited about it, is there's always the worry when he's gone through all those injuries and had to make changes and things to protect his body, that he may have lost some pace. So the fact he still has his raw pace, hopefully that is a good sign he can return with the best of everything that we always saw in him, great skill, swing, seam, subtle variations, all at high pace.

Agreed. I've said many times, I think the CA policy of trying to prevent fast bowler injuries by forcing them to bowl less is completely flawed. You build the strength in the body by bowling more, not less. They need to get rid of the overs restrictions for teenagers, and they need to get guys like Cummins just doing lots of bowling and get him into the Shield games. Unfortunately now, there's no option for Shield games until after the BBL. But I really hope that after bringing him in for these ODI's then he can get through the BBL and does start playing shield games after that.

I wish Cummins had been playing Shield cricket. I think he needs to just do more bowling, not less. The cotton wool approach really doesn't seem to work. Needs to get more bowling in his body. The thing is that he certainly did earn his selection through Matador cup performances, but then not having played any of the Shield games means that he's not had the bowling under his belt between then and now that he really needed to have. CA have a lot to answer for. He needs to be bowling more and more, not less and less.

He does just seem to hit big with so much ease doesn't he. There are others around, but he's certainly right up there with them. Unfortunately for NZ he's got a bit of an Aaron Finch like career, where he's done really well in the short form but been pretty hopeless in longer form cricket. He's certainly a world class ODI batsman and first class striker of the ball. Just an easy flick and it's 30 rows back on a big ground.

As I mentioned above, I'm happy having Faulkner in the side, but would not play him in any match against India unless he's demonstrated that he's found some different death options that can change it up a bit. So happy to have him in the team against any opposition but India. (I have a feeling SA may be working him out too, might start being a risk against them), but any other team that haven't been exposed to him as much he can still be good against.

I don't mind that lineup, but I would have a caveat, that I would drop Faulkner for any matches against India, and probably South Africa also. Indian batsmen especially have just worked him out and smash him everywhere and he seems to have no answer.

Ronan, hard to argue with the Head v Maxwell comparison. It becomes a bit hard to drop him in favour of Maxwell for the next match though when he's just scored a vital 50. Is it possible they might drop Bailey and play both of them?