Marsh and Paine’s rescue job doesn’t vindicate selectors’ decisions

The selectors are feeling emboldened after the gamble to recall Shaun Marsh for a 9th time paid off. Imagine what kind of player Maxwell would be if he got nine “second chances” with the Australian side. Surely Maxwell has done enough to get the nod against a Mitch Marsh still overcoming the effects of shoulder surgery. If he’s just recovered from shoulder surgery he’s not going to bowl more than 6-8 overs of medium paced deliveries. If Mitch Marsh does play, surely Cummins, Starc and Paine all bat ahead of him in the order.

"...that might spare us the endless theorising about first Test squads". Really, you want to be spared this? Speculating on the first First XI whets the appetite beautifully, surely one of the most enjoyable parts of the summer.

Whether you support the selections of the players or not you have to give credit to the players that were out there and got the runs or the wickets. It seems a strange and fruitless position to say “Marsh got a match winning hundred but Maxwell might have got more”

While it's always hard coming in and out of a team (think Khawaja), Marsh's issue is that he has a pretty underwhelming FC record for a guy so favoured (i.e. it's no better or worse than other's who have had the "never select again" red line put through them), has a habit of breaking down and also a perception of failing at the wrong time; think 2015 Ashes or India 2017, when he was selected as an sub continent "specialist". After these two tests though, you'd say that Marsh has just about bought himself a test career until he retires (considering his injury history it's hard to imagine he'll play on long past 35).

It's hard to see how they can't be vindicated at this point. We'd probably have to see both of them score ducks this inning and then drop some catches - both of them, preferably our arch nemeses Broad and Anderson - as England chase down 300+ for the least likely test victory in a decade with Anderson hitting the winning runs - for the selector's not to claim a victory with these two...

That's not right at all - Maxwell scored a century at 6 only a few months ago and Smith scored one in 2013 or 2014 (can't remember which).

No the selectors decision to pick Marsh has been clearly vindicated. The average cricket watcher uses stats without looking at the whole context. The majority of peoples' prejudice comes from Marsh's shocking series against India 2011/12. We all know he shouldn't of been selected off a 99* in t20, one match into the comeback. Yes he has made a few ducks since when the whole team got bowled out for not many against RSA and then England. (What was the other batsman doing). He has played a lot of innings where he has dug the team out of trouble. All his 100s but the one against West Indies. A couple of crucial 50s in India, 99 vs India MCG, 49 day/night test 2nd innings vs New Zealand. This is why he gets selected over Cowan, Ferguson, Maxwell etc because he has proven he can rescue an innings and thats the number 6 we need.

The selectors have most assuredly been vindicated. They took an educated guess on strategy and it has paid off. Hats off to them, they don't always get it right. Fair play to them when they do.

Mysterious selections but they’ve both performed well enough for the selections to be now vindicated. It will be interesting to see if Marsh and Paine can now maintain consistently good performances to stay in the side beyond this series.

We should win comfortably and Shaun has set that up. We still have to take 20 wickets and I'm curious if having the 5th bowling option will be a factor. Maxwell may not be a world class bowler and Smith probably wouldn't use him anyway but he would be handy to keep our frontline bowlers fresh and has similar batting stats to Shaun. Selectors took a gamble on Shaun or the bowlers not sustaining an injury,so far so good.

"His double ton proved them that he should have been selected" Nope. Scoring well on a small suburban ground against a second string state attack does not provide evidence as to whether he should have been selected in the Test team. Particularly when his replacement played pretty well. And the Test team won.

Obliquely, Atawhai's post highlights the slanted view and auto-suspicion many punters take of selections and selectors.

“What if Glenn Maxwell had batted at six, as many predicted? Would he have put down a decent score by now in the series? Almost definitely.” Andre, I’m afraid that shows a strange understanding of probability, and not only if you’ve watched Maxwell. Also, wrong to say that Maxwell is better than Marsh against spin. They showed yesterday that Marsh averages around 57 in Tests, much better than his average against pace, oddly. I can’t imagine Maxwell playing the kind of technically correct innings on a seaming wicket that Marsh played yesterday. But agree with your general point in the sense it’s hard to see why Maxwell was dropped - maybe it was the concern about his capacity to make big hundreds. Paine was the really odd one - dumbfounding in the sense that Paine has only made one first class century and an average of 29; while Nevill has 9 100s and an average of 39 in about the same no of games. Maybe they see something in Paine that makes him more likely to succeed at Test level, but even yesterday’s fine innings was perhaps evidence that it still optimistic that he could make the occasional century- played a bad shot in the sense he hit it down the fielders throat. As for Renshaw, that was more obvious than some thought. To me, he looked like the luckiest batsmen ever given the number of plays and misses in his short career - luck almost inevitably evens out. But he should be back.

I know you didn't write the headline Andre but yes, SMarsh and Tim Paine have vindicated the selectors decisions. Even more so if Australia win this test as there will be no coming back for England.

Yep ! You can understand criticism when the selectors get it wrong and their charges fail, but when their selections all come up trumps so far, not sure as a fan I would be poking my head up to complain ?

Your response to my comments is exactly what you should have included in your article. Yes, Marsh and to a degree Paine have had plenty of chances, but in hindsight, the selectors went with guys who ave proven themselves at this level and were in form (according to the selectors, Paine's in form as a keeper in T20!!). Your headline is still pretty hard to justify, given how well both guys played yesterday. I agree there's lots of time left in the series, but hopefully they'll keep playing well. I like your suggestion about specialist players but there are a couple of problems with that, one of which you've highlighted. The T20 season lasts less than 2 months, as does the ODI's. That's not enough of a season for up and coming players to get time and experience, if they are playing only in one of those formats. Once these guys are established, they can play around the world, but a newcomer is limited. The other issue comes down to a cricketer's ego. First class cricketers all aspire to play Tests, and all want to play all 3 formats, so somehow that attitude needs to change. IN saying that, we don't to miss out on getting someone to "cross over", eg Warner was really an ODI/T20 specialist, but is now a crucial part of our batting order. No idea what the answer is, but it certainly bears some more thought

You can torture yourself with "woulda, coulda, shoulda" off in pixieland, or you can just accept what actually happened.

"Three team policy?" Are you suggesting that none of the players should be playing in more than one format? I know there are definitely differences and you get some players who do really well in some formats and poorly in others, but for a lot of the players, the same skills that do well in one format actually translate across, just applied a bit differently, so often a lot of the best players in one format are still among the best in the other formats. Completely splitting the formats into three separate teams will simply weaken all of them.

Andre, if you kick off with a controversial statement, as you did, it gives the impression this is your main point and you have to expect others will jump all over it. In regards to that, I don't see how else the selectors' choice can be vindicated, so I don't agree with your assertion. As for the other argument about "horses for courses", it's a valid point and I think we are moving towards that, at least regarding the formats of the game, and maybe that thinking should extend to the location and conditions under which a test is played.