Thumping selection hangover creates a serious headache

OPINION: When Australian chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns awoke, his head was throbbing. Groaning, he hauled himself into the sitting position. Bit by bit, the room came into focus. Paper was strewn everywhere, crumpled and torn. A whiteboard in one corner was covered in thick red crosses and lines, also something that trickled. Underneath it, sitting on top of a pile of pizza boxes, was an under-19 tour handbook and a sheaf of Cricinfo print-outs.

Elsewhere in the room, Mark Waugh slept on. And there, too, if Hohns’ eyes did not deceive him, was Greg Chappell, comatose. Wasn’t he a teetotaller, thought Hohns. Or was that vegan?

Cupping a hand over one eye, Hohns turned his attention to a television set flickering away in the other corner. On screen was the Australian test team, 1-12. ‘‘Maddinson? exclaimed Hohns, squinting. ‘‘We meant Patterson, didn’t we?’’ Peering again, he said: ‘‘Isn’t Renshaw a Pom? Gawd.’’

He crawled a little closer. ‘‘Wade for Nevill?! That was just a bit of a joke. And who is Chad Sayers?’’ Hohns began to reach for the handbook, then stopped. He was seeing double, two Ds in Chadd. What was the use?

Slumping, he muttered to himself: ‘‘Oh, no, what have we done.’’ And: ‘‘What was in those pizzas?’’ And then, oddly: ‘‘Is this how America feels?’’

We admit that our source isn’t completely reliable, that it was dark and stuffy in that cupboard and hard to see or hear through that keyhole and that he was chiefly interested in the left-over pizza. We accept that it probably didn’t happen like this at all. We know that the selectors are all gentlemen of upstanding character and temperate habits, unassailable in their love of Australian cricket and selfless in their devotion to it.

But we cannot escape the feeling that this was a case of getting carried away in and by the moment. The Australian public was demanding blood, and blood they got. One minute, the trouble was that no young players were knocking the door down. The next, they were storming the barricades. One moment, the Sheffield Shield was irrelevant. The next, everything else was irrelevant except the Sheffield Shield.

Up to four debutants. Five certain changes in all.

For now, a purpose has been served, an itch scratched, a tub of bathwater upended. Rather than dwell on those who have failed, suddenly, we’re titillated by those who haven’t had the chance to fail, yet. ‘‘Look over there,’’ we were told, and we all did. Elites are always trying to make you do that.

But by Thursday afternoon, the papers and pizza boxes all will have been cleared away, the whiteboard cleaned, the carpets vacuumed, the Don Bradman portrait repaired. There will be only a cricket match in Adelaide between a very green Australian team and very mean South African team in the ultra-taxing environment of pink-ball, daynight test cricket. Australia will be greenest where day-night cricket is toughest, in batting. To complete the kaleidoscope, a whitewash looms.