The Australian selectors have come under quite a bit of fire this summer, but just months before the side goes to a world cup as reigning champions, they should be looking to select the best ODI team in lead-up to the midyear series.
As it currently stands, Cricket Australia selects players on merit and potential, not on form, runs and wickets. We have seen how this tactic has worked in selecting our Test side. This was one of the reasons behind our heavy defeats to Pakistan and India and could also be a reason behind an upset loss to Sri Lanka at the end of the month.
Mathew Wade, Nick Larkin, Joe Burns and Tom Cooper are four of our top-five runscorers in this summer’s Sheffield Shield, but selectors won’t even give them a look-in. Instead they chose Queenslander Marnus Labuschagne, who averages 33.17 with the bat and has not played any cricket of any form since the Shield started its break for the BBL.
The same can be said about our one-day squad. Chris Lynn, Ben McDermott, D’Arcy Short and Sam Heazlett were the top four leading runscorers for the JLT One-Day Cup held in October yet none of them is in the ODI squad to play India late next week.
Mathew Wade has a right to feel robbed. At age 31, he has already played all three forms of the game for Australia and deserves one last go as a specialist batsman. What more do the selectors want him to show before selecting him?
Shaun and Mitch Marsh’s time is up in the national Test team, so two spots in the squad remain open for the Sri Lanka series. Let’s hope Wade is given the nod to prove to the Australian public that he can bat and score runs for his nation.
We are already four Tests into this summer and no player has yet scored a century, although Marcus Harris and Travis Head have looked good at the crease and are the future of the Australian team. This is what Australia will get if they pick players who have been scoring runs for their state.
Harris is a great story. He has scored runs after runs after runs for Victoria and is given a chance for Australia at age 26 after moving from Western Australia in order to improve his cricket.
Come Sri Lanka, we need to see the best team out there based on runs and wickets, not on what the selectors think they can do or what they did ten years ago.
We are falling behind the cricket nations. The ICC World Test Championship begins with the Ashes after the World Cup, and if we are going to be competitive in that, we need to start scoring runs and winning Test matches. We haven’t won a Test series in England for a long time, and if we start choosing blokes who can score runs, then we’ll do all right in the Ashes.
The Australian selectors have a huge job, but let’s hope they use some common sense and pick players on performance, not on potential or merit.
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