Green may be an all-round good choice

AUSTRALIAN cricket has a major star on the rise but how he is managed could make or break his career.

Ricky Ponting’s call for West Australian all-rounder Cameron Green to be included as a reserve batsman in the Test series against New Zealand is a significant vote of confidence given Green is only 20. While he is considered only a rough chance of selection because he cannot bowl at the moment due to injury, it’s heartening the debate over his elevation has started in earnest because he will get there eventually.

Green, and several others, would seem a better bet than current reserve Cam Bancroft who is struggling.

Green is unlikely to play a Test this summer but he is a young man with an exceptional future.

All-rounders are great for cricket because they create such immense discussion.

Forests were cut down to provide the newsprint for debate over the many threads of Shane Watson’s career and, serviceable though he was, it’s not as if he was Imran Khan.

Rarely since Rod Marsh branded a 16-year-old Ponting a “once in a generation player’’ has there been so much excitement about a young Australian cricketer as Green.

Greg Chappell has been sprouting Green’s virtues as a thoroughly genuine Test match batting prospect for some time but the remarkable thing is some people think he may be an even better bowler.

He’s probably not, but at around 200cm his 140km/h deliveries have garnered 28 first class wickets at an exceptional average of 21 to go with his two first class centuries.

The fact that he has a couple of hot spots in his back means he is not bowling so he would have to be chosen as a batsman only.

That may not be a bad thing.