Lacklustre Aussies need to start taking risks and so do the selectors

We are even using our own ball and we still can't get it right. The batting order is in a complete mess. Khawaja and Marsh are passengers/ dinosaurs/ useless. The 3rd, 4th and 5th bowling spots are in a mess. How can this happen half way through a World Cup??? Mo + Rash and Chahal + Kuldeep are going to end our campaign. Whoever can get to us first. Whomever backed Maxwell to be our third best bowler half way through a World Cup can collect your dividend NOW. @ The Bush - how can you call the most economical 10 overs (46 runs) "carted"? We scored 334 so 4.6 an over is GOLD.

Having a decent all rounder is very important going into the finals. I would include Mitch Marsh ASAP to get him up to speed. The batting will be our key though and one suspects that our top order are ready to fire.

The Aussies are slow starters. Watch them building

We won.

While I understand why people might assume Ben Stokes has a much better ODI record than Mitch Marsh or even Stoinis it simply isn’t true. And Stokes definitely does NOT have a good enough record to make into the team on bowling alone. Here are their respective records: BATTING. Average S/R BOWLING Average Run/Rate Stokes 37.5 94 40.5 6.1 Marsh 35.7 93 35.5 5.5 Stoinis 36.4 93 44 6.2 Marsh comes out as the clear winner on the basis of his bowling. I think many, including me, would have guessed Stokes had the better bowling figures because he has done a lot better in Tests. But it is a common fallacy to think worse of the Marshes because of their Test record. But Stokes’s ODI figures are more of a par with the part-timer allrounders like Maxwell and Stoinis, whereas as Marsh is in the same league as Coulter-Nile, Richardson, Plunkett and Wood (better than Wood’s in fact). But of course lack of match practice would be a big question mark of selected, especially for his batting.

I often miss some news and try to follow as best I can. I assumed Hazlewood was injured.

After watching the first few matches I think Australia needs to take some risks also. Shaun Marsh needs to get a “side strain” also. With our severe lack of bowling depth, I’d rather use Mitch Marsh as the 4th bowler and bring in Handscomb or Turner into the line up. Usman Warner Finch Smith Maxwell Handscomb/Turner Carey Marsh Cummins Starc Zampa/Lyon Once one of the openers are out, Smith becomes the only anchor and the rest of the line up swings for the fences.

The fast bowlers generally bowled badly and they still took wickets and they won. The spin bowlers on a wicket that does nothing for them with short boundaries can bowl accurately and still get hit for a lot.

And maybe you don't know that Shaun Marsh was the premier batsmn in IPLs T20 a few seasons back. He knows how to score big and quick. He is far better value than the underperforming overrated Stoinus. Stoinus survives on the potential tag. But Mitch Marsh appears the best option. He is ideally suited to ODI. Lets hope he wins it for us. Its either Lyon or Zampa for me, not both. You don't need a wrist spinner, you need your best spin bowler for the conditions. You don't need to follow trends. You need to set the new trend.

Put Hazlewood in the damn squad. Five more group games plus two finals = 70 overs in a 3 week period. Don't have to play him against the minnows either. Too many selectors and coaches trying to justify their positions by over-complicating everything and getting too cute with selections, batting line up, in-game tactics (dumb chase against India), etc. It's like they manufacture these problems and crises so that they have an alibi for when they fail.

The editing features are rubbish now, that looked a lot better before it posted- it seems I know paragraphs, unlike The Roar automatic post controls...

That would be how I'd go about it yeah And I'd argue that our best bowling attack is Cummins, Starc, Zampa and Lyon. Closest thing to international quality we have.

Let’s compare Mitch Marsh to Ben Stokes as ODI All-rounders: Batting- Avg/Strike Rate M.M.- 35.7/93.08 B.S.- 37.5/94.51 Slight win to Stokes, but very little in it. Bowling- Avg/Econ/SR M.M.- 35.5/5.52/38.6 B.S.- 40.47/6.11/39.7 Still close, but Marsh definitely ahead. Now, based on all that, and with Stokes being considered an automatic inclusion by almost everyone, why are people hating on Mitch Marsh? He should always have been in the team ahead of Stoinis, people just let their disappointment with MM the Test player cloud their judgement.

i think the timing of the Ashes is just about the only consideration in the selection of this squad

we would have lost, would we? what colour underpants am i wearing today?

Chris, is it a sign of the times that guys keep pushing for runs, even though it's clear that's a silly path to take? The really good players in years gone by, seemed to sum up pitches very quickly and could mentally guess a par score after either batting or watching just a few overs. You're 100% right, there was no way a team was going to go at 10 an over for the last 10 overs on that pitch, but that was probably clear from about over 25 or 30? That being the case, why push for something that is likely to a) be unachievable and b) could potentially derail the innings? A good par total on that pitch & ground, in those bowling conditions was always going to be around 330 or so. Surely it makes sense to get there easily given the great start we got and the fragility of our tail? Or maybe the powers that be are setting batting expectations too high?

1. Faulkner is a hard one, he seems to have really lost his mojo. A few years ago he was Tassie's premier bowler, even in first class cricket. But his last first class match was November 2017, and his last domestic 50-over match was October 2017. Not sure if it's injury related, or he just really lost confidence since India started taking him to pieces. 2. Agar really got badly treated by selectors this season. He was in the ODI squad for all the ODI's at the start of the season but didn't play a single game, meaning he missed most of the Shield matches, yet wasn't playing for Australia either. Then he seemed to get a bit burnt out by it all, and then that was followed by injuries. It's really hard to know how effective he can be as a lower order hitter at international level. 3. I think there was a period where there was a lot of looking around the domestic scene struggling to even find a decent keeper, hence Paine being picked for Australia when not even keeping for his state. I think the selectors just didn't find anyone made a compelling case, so it was a struggle to know what to do. Plus we have an issue where so many of our best ODI batsmen are all best as top-order players. Lets face it, we don't have a Buttler or a Gilchrist. 4. I do think the selectors got suckered in by Stoinis initial few innings for Australia and other things. I do think overall, while Mitch Marsh should be nowhere near the test side at the moment, he's actually a pretty good ODI player and better than Stoinis with both bat and ball, certainly much better when it comes to late order hitting.

When I said they didn't really have the opportunity to get a really big score, I was talking about the team score, not the individual scores. Yes, these guys came in with enough overs to build a decent innings for themselves. But what I meant was that I think the pitch conditions just made trying to start upping the rate in the last 20 overs just not possible, it was possible to continue at a similar rate, but pushing it up any further seemed almost impossible without some bad bowling. So they could have just continued batting how they were, getting every single possible and punishing the bad balls to tick it along at 6.5rpo and get a 325-330 score. But scoring 10 rpo off the last 10-15 overs to turn it into a massive score just wasn't possible on that pitch like on many others.

I think the problem with guys like Lynn, Short, Turner etc is that, if they were going to be in the side they really needed to get introduced a couple of years ago and had a good run at the side. If Turner was still bowling I think he'd have had more of a shot, but having to replace a batsman, not an allrounder, made it harder to fit him in. So there could be a suggestion that it would have been good to try and give these guys more of a shot a while ago. With Lynn that's always been difficult because of his injuries, and Short has shown some good hitting ability in previous seasons, but not to the level we saw this year, and by then it's too late to really get him a good run in international cricket ready for the world cup, same with Turner. These guys are a shot at building an ODI career over the next couple of years ready for the next big tournament, but without them having had the international experience it was always going to be a massive gamble to take such guys. Maybe it's a gamble Australia needed to try, but if these sorts of guys had been picked, and failed miserably, everyone would be roasting the selectors about picking such unproven guys for such a big tournament. And to be honest, if you talk about building up to the World Cup over a couple of years, 2 years ago the selectors probably thought the lower order hitting power would be based around Mitch Marsh and James Faulkner still.