AUSTRALIA SELECTORS SLAMMED AS MORONS

Danny Murphy says rivals’ defence won’t give Harry Kane sleepless nights WARNE AND MacGILL FURIOUS OVER ASHES SQUAD INCLUSIONS WICKETKEEPER PAINE CALLED UP AFTER SEVEN-YEAR ABSENCE

AUSTRALIA’S selectors were today forced to defend a contentious Ashes squad in a row that is threatening to disrupt the hosts’ build-up to next week’s First Test against England.

Shane Warne criticised the choices as “confused”, while Stuart MacGill, another former Australia player, branded the selectors as “morons masquerading as mentors”.

Selection chief Trevor Hohns and his panel, which includes former Australia batsman Mark Waugh, dropped a bombshell today by picking a wicketkeeper in Tim Paine who has not played Test cricket for seven years and recalling a batsman in Shaun Marsh, 34, who has been axed nine times.

Both are the wrong side of 30 and have questionable records at the highest level but are in the squad for the opening two Tests.

There were also places in the 13-man party for two uncapped players — 30-year-old medium pace bowler Chad Sayers and opener Cameron Bancroft, the latter replacing English-born Matt Renshaw, who hit 184 in his last Test innings on Australian soil, against Pakistan in January.

Warne, the leg-spin great who took 708 Test wickets, said: “England at the moment are just going along nicely. Australia look confused. They’re picking wicketkeepers that aren’t even keeping for their state. To me, I think England are in a better situation going into that First Test than Australia are.”

Paine, who played the last of his four Tests in October 2010, has not scored a first-class century for a decade. He is also behind Matthew Wade as a keeper for Tasmania but has been picked for the Ashes ahead of his out-of-form rival and Peter Nevill, the other contender from New South Wales, largely because of two half-centuries he has hit in the past week

The 32-year-old, who is his country’s T20 keeper, struck the first of those for a Cricket Australia XI in a tour game against England in Adelaide and followed up with an unbeaten 71 in Tasmania’s Sheffield Shield match against Victoria, when he was playing as a specialist batsman.

Hohns, Australia’s chief selector, was forced to defend the call-up of Paine, whose career had slid so much that