Age as a selection criteria

I don't know why age is relevant to selection in professional or club cricket. At professional level, either a player is good enough to be in the XI or they aren't. In club cricket you might take into account a few other factors so it might be, for example, batting, bowling, fielding, availability, attitude. Whatever happens, age is irrelevant unless there is no splitting the players based on those criteria.

So Simon Katich being dropped from the Australian team is simply wrong, as a politician there has pointed out in strong terms. We already knew that the Aussie selectors were not up to the job by the fact they've selected 10+ spinners since Warne retired and the fact that Hilditch announced that they'd done a good job after the latest Ashes loss. Selectors can't play the match admittedly, but I don't think anyone would claim that Australia came into The Ashes with a settled side. Not so long ago, Greg Chappell announced that he'd rather give an aging champion one too many chances than one too few, when talking about Mike Hussey. Well he seems to have forgotten that advice now after not even selecting Katich for the top 25 Aussie cricketers. Not the top XI....he's somehow dropped from the top XI to outside the top 25.

It's with the 2013 Ashes in mind, when Katich will be the grand old age of 37. Some players do lose form in their 30s but many others don't. Look at Tendulkar and Laxman. If Australia had a player nipping at Katich's heels to get in then it would be more understandable but they don't. Phil Hughes has been, to date, average.

As an Englishman it's lovely to see Australia get it so wrong. They didn't select their best XI once during the Ashes and they don't look like doing it for the forseeable future. Long may it continue!

Australia's bowling attack for the Gabba

Given recent scores at the Gabba, I was going to post this morning about how it looks like it's seam friendly and if your spinner is borderline for selection, it looks like a place to go in with 4 seamers. So England will of course play Swann as he's their best bowler, but for Australia I'd be going with Bollinger (assuming he's fit), Harris, Siddle and Johnson, with North, Katich and Clarke able to bowl spin as necessary.

But Greg Chappell seems to be leaning away from 4 seamers, so what do I know?

Greg Chappell in the running for first full time Aussie Selector post

Greg Chappell will be interviewing for the full time Australian selector role that's going in Australia and is going up against Jamie Cox, amongst others, no doubt. I'd love to know what each candidate is proposing to do, apart from watch as many games as possible, to increase the number of successful elevations from state cricket into Test cricket - the possibilities are endless.

What I find interesting is that Andrew Hilditch is considered to have "won high praise for guiding Australia through generational change" but all I read in the online Australian press is very negative. Whether professional cricket writers or amateur bloggers - I can't find one person that thinks that Australia are currently selecting the strongest eleven.

Has Hilditch really "won high praise for guiding Australia through generational change"?

Pakistan look for way forward

The ICC seem to have bought in Mike Brearley and Greg Chappell as "ambassadors" to help the Pakistan cricket board to return to home Tests. The article mentions nothing about their exact responsibilities, but instinctively it seems unlikely that ex-cricketers are likely to be right for that role.....a combination of political savvy, security knowledge and change management skills on an international scale seem to be what's needed, but the attempt can only be applauded.

This comes at a time when the Pakistan team is again in turmoil on the pitch after Afridi's resignation one game into his Test return. My view? He's soft and he needs to put his country ahead of himself. It's not tricky to change the way you bat based on conditions unless you think you're "too cool for school" and aren't willing to make the effort. He is good enough to play Test cricket and his assertions that he isn't, rather than getting in the nets for hours to practice defensive shots, puts him in the same bracket as Shane Bond to me.

When did players start to take representing their country - the highest honour in the game - so lightly?