India recall veteran opener to bolster shaky top order for world trophy showdown with Australia

Yes it seems so. Very curious to know what you had said.

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I read in article this morning that Rahane averaged 60 from seven matches in the Ranji trophy recently.

Against Larwood he only averaged 21 that Summer and got out every 36 balls he faced from him. McCable and Fingleton both comfortably outperformed him against the actual bodyline component of England's attack. On that score, Bradman was only marginally ahead of the rest.

Rahane has played 82 Tests for India and in not one of them - zero - has he opened the batting.

I conquer.

Bradman still averaged in the mid-50's in the bodyline series, mind you. Poor by his standards, great by everyone else's.

You sure are obsessed with MM. Across multiple platforms Uncle. It's actually quite sad.

They couldn't dictate pitch conditions on the last 2 tours of Australia. How did that work out?

India would be wrong. If being good at white ball cricket automatically made someone good at red ball cricket, guys like Stoinis, Finch, and Mitch Marsh would average more than 33 in the Shield, and Warner would have passed 50 once or twice in test cricket in the last three years.

India seem to think it’s helped Rahane.

He was certainly hopeless against bodyline and none too flash on less than perfect pitches either, just for the record.

Yeah, he is an Australia A red ball player at best I reckon. White ball cricket is another matter; I think he is great at the top of the order and should concentrate on that form of the game

If you pick on the current form/ability, then one would not expect “to see another Mitch Marsh 5 wicket haul on the opening day of a Test at The Oval”; because that occurred almost 4 years ago. And he has played 1 FC game in 2 years when he made 100 not out batting at 7 hitting out against a tired Tasmanian attack on his own dung heap and did not bowl. Very little evidence of current form/ability on display there for an Ashes squad place. Career averages are a good indicator of the player’s ability at any time, provided the number of innings is large enough – say 30. Yeah sure, some players get better over time. No arguments from me there. The question is, who are they? There is no solid evidence that MM has done that, in red-ball cricket. Or are you suggesting that doing well in T20 and 50 overs indicates that you have improved your red-ball game?

Yeah, I agree with pretty much everything you said. I am not saying that marsh should be in the test side. I was just throwing his bowling figures in England out there. Great point regarding the batting. With a greater sample size I would expect that batting average to increase, at least a little bit, but if that is the case I have to expect the bowling average to increase too.

You pick on current form/ability, not career averages. Career averages are only good for analysis of a player's standing in the game, once they have retired. Thing is, some players get better 10 years on, especially if they were parachuted into the elite level very early on.

OK, then let us not ignore it completely. Then that also means that his batting is probably useless in England. So what do we conclude? Play the guy as a specialist quick in England. But if we think about that a bit more, it is silly because all four of our quicks in the squad are much better bowlers than MM. The point is his England stats are unreliable because most would agree that he is a better test batsman than an average of < 15 suggests. His problem is that he is just not good enough to be a top 6 batsman, nor is he good enough to be a specialist bowler – his overall stats show that. He should never have been chosen in the test squad; Hardie would have been a better all-rounder backup because he can bat – not just stand and hit

Well assuming that is enough to measure his "true" ability in England then he is a great bowler over there and a useless batsman; his batting average is < 15.

Eight innings. It is not a huge sample size but it is too big to be ignored completely.