Fishing With Dynamite No Longer, Time Has Come For Selectors To Get The Hook

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday November 8, 2008

ALEXB ROWN

WITH the possible exception of Vatican City missionaries and Peter Sterling's barber, Australian selectors have held down the cushiest posts of the past decade. A superstar line-up, coupled with mediocre international competition, left the panel with little to do but maintain the status quo and watch as the Australian cricket juggernaut vanquished all before them. Fishing with dynamite, you might say.

Those days are gone. Retirements and injuries to key personnel have greatly eroded the Australian team, placing increased focus on selections. And while the selectors were initially praised for the manner in which they drip-fed the likes of Phil Jaques, Brad Haddin, Mitchell Johnson and Beau Casson into the Test side, the same panel must stand accountable for the untried and unbalanced squad it sent to India - one that requires a major reversal of fortune if it is to retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

Entering the final Test of the series, the Australian bowlers had averaged just 6.5 wickets per innings. The lack of bowling penetration has undoubtedly not been helped by the indifferent form of Brett Lee and Stuart Clark, but the fact selectors overlooked bowlers they saw fit to award central contracts to six months prior remains a mystery.

The omission of Casson, Australia's only centrally contracted spinner, for the untried duo of Bryce McGain (who arrived in India injured and returned home before the first Test) and Jason Krejza was particularly befuddling. The selectors' reluctance to take a left-arm wrist spinner to India has appeared confused each time Ricky Ponting has thrown the ball Simon Katich's way. And the struggles of Cameron White - regarded as a batting all-rounder - have only intensified the spotlight on the four-man panel of Andrew Hilditch, Merv Hughes, David Boon and Jamie Cox.

Questions have also been asked of the move to take Peter Siddle to India, while the contracted trio of Ashley Noffke, Ben Hilfenhaus and Shaun Tait remained at home. An impact bowler of Tait's abilities would surely have been welcomed on this most barren of tours, while the reverse swing of Hilfenhaus might also have proved handy against an Indian side that had won just three of its past 12 Tests, and slumped to a series defeat to Sri Lanka in its most recent tour.

Michael Slater recently suggested the unbalanced nature of the selection panel (two Tasmanians, a Victorian and a South Australian) had done the national side few favours, particularly when the vast majority of modern Test cricketers have been drawn from NSW, Queensland and Western Australia. As players stand accountable for their performances, so must selectors. The time for a review has arrived.

I'VE never had the luxury of supporting a Manly, a Hawthorn, a Manchester United. As fate would have it, the sporting teams that lodged themselves between my left and right ventricles have proved as successful as devil-worshipping Democrats in the deep south, with a wooden spoon collection to rival Gordon Ramsay's.

Clumps of hair, tonsils and many cuticles have been sacrificed to futile sporting exploits. The blood pressure resembles a postcode. While family members and mates have longed for weekends, I have pined for Mondays, glorious Mondays, where no more own goals, intercept tries or three-putts could blight my day. Only a Washington Generals season ticket holder can empathise.

Perhaps the saddest of these sporting devotions has been the Philadelphia Phillies, a baseball team that recently became the first American sporting franchise to post 10,000 defeats, and spent more time on the canvas than a late-model Joe Bugner. This was unrequited love at its coldest. Years of strained eyeballs across results pages and disrupted sleep patterns to view games were rewarded with botched plays, blown saves and appalling trades. A smarter, less masochistic man would have traded up to the Red Sox. I stuck.

And then it happened. A season that must surely be ushering in the apocalypse. The Phillies - that bastion of underachievement for so long - stunned all and sundry by clinching the World Series, bringing the brotherly love back to Philadelphia and the hitherto unknown thrill of victory to this wizened hack.

A bloke could get used to this. Over to you, Wayne Bennett.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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