Selection panel not needed: Buchanan

FORMER national coach John Buchanan has called for Cricket Australia to immediately abolish its selection panel and follow the lead of the All Blacks by handing all power to coach Darren Lehmann.

Selectors are just days away from meeting to settle on the all-important Ashes XI, but Buchanan is adamant that chairman Trevor Hohns, Greg Chappell and Mark Waugh and the entire concept of a team picked by committee is surplus to requirements.

Buchanan criticised cricket administrators for sticking blindly to the outdated concept of selectors, simply because it’s always been done.

The man who oversaw one of the most successful eras in the history of Australian cricket has called on the likes of Pat Howard and James Sutherland to catch up with other sports and programs like the streamlined All Blacks.

“When selectors were first ‘invented’, there were no coaches, no talent identification systems, no technologies that allow for capturing of all data and vision of all players, no support systems such as academies, sports science staff and so on,” Buchanan wrote on his website, Buchanan International.

“If Cricket Australia seeks to return to world cricket dominance again, then in a number of key areas, it cannot expect to keep doing the same things and get different results.

“Clinging to relics only anchors the business or the organisation in the past, and does not allow it to move into the future with . . . confidence.”