SELECTORS DESERVE PLAUDITS
There’s overwhelming evidence panel knew a thing or two armchair experts didn’t
FOR the first time ever, it looks like we need to give the Australian cricket selectors more than a bit of credit.
Can anyone remember a time when everything they’ve touched has seemingly turned to gold?
We all love to have a whinge about one guy not having the statistics, or someone having as many chances to crack the Test team as a cat has lives, or simply coming out of the blue, but this time the overwhelming majority have egg on their faces.
In the past, being a member of the national selection panel has been a poisoned chalice.
It’s the job everyone thinks they want, but in reality it’s one of the hardest jobs in the world.
But everything Trevor Hohns, Mark Waugh, Greg Chappell and Darren Lehmann have touched in recent times has turned to gold.
Yes, some players have been thrown in the deep end, like they were last year, and they’re now out of the squad.
But they were clearly dropped for legitimate reasons.
At the end of the day, that’s probably going to make the Sheffield Shield – our feeder competition – a lot stronger as players take national level experience back to their states.
Some of them might be back one day, but not while the likes of Mitch Marsh, Shaun Marsh and Tim Paine go about cementing their places.
We’ll consider the elder Marsh, Shaun, first. It was well documented that this was his ninth coming as a Test player.
Three times he was injured, three times he was a stopgap for an injured player and he was never in the team for more than five Tests in a row.
Perhaps we were a bit harsh to say he didn’t deserve a lookin. After a half-century, then an unbeaten ton, maybe an extended run beckons.
But clearly the selectors knew something we outside the bubble didn’t. What a master stroke.
The younger Marsh, Mitch, seriously carved up in the first half of the Shield season, a fact most people decided to ignore.
Form is the best currency and in his previous five innings he averaged 86 with the bat.
Do we just have something against a bloke called Marsh?
Paine was a bit of a shock. But no one was banging down the door and the people wanted action to rid us of Matthew Wade – and the selectors did it.
Maybe they’re just lucky England is so bad. Or maybe we should stop being keyboard warriors (ironic, huh?) and back those in the most important office in the land. They know what they’re on about.