25 August 2009

The Australian selectors

Interesting to hear Jason Gillespie calling for a full time selector - it's not the first time that argument has been made in Australia. Of course everyone is blamed when a team loses, but Australia's selections played a crucial role in losing the Ashes. Even if you don't count the omission of Stuart Clark as a mistake despite watching Johnson and Siddle going for loads per over in the first 3 Tests, the error of not bringing a back up opener (despite Watson coming in and doing better than could possibly have been expected) and omitting Nathan Hauritz were huge mistakes.

These days, multiple big mistakes in sport normally means being sacked if you're a manager or selector, so if Jamie Cox - who I believe was the selector on duty for the last Test - manages to survive then he's done well. There's no way Ponting's position should be under scrutiny before the selectors themselves, and James Sutherland seems to think neither should be. We'll see....

1 comment:

vijayanand said...

Shane Warne – The best bowler Australia has ever produced has opened up his mind to the media. He exposed his discontent regarding umpires. According to the ace spinner barring a few exceptions like Simon Tauter and ASAP Rauf other umpires went awry in terms of performance .Expressing disappointment that the standard of umpiring has deteriorated to the worst extent in the past twenty years of time he opined that though umpiring was a hard job, the performances of the umpires in the Ashes series had been consistently so ordinary. As far as Warne is concerned umpire Billy Bowden whom he expected to deliver correct judgments was also not consistent in performing his duty.
The spinner repents that there are too many instances of such bad judgments, which is increasingly becoming a cause of concern. He directly made a mention of names of umpires Daryl Harper and Billy Bowden, accusing them to be adamant in not confessing their wrong judgments. He also tried to strengthen his claim by mentioning that several players were not having a good opinion about those umpires in their minds. Warne insisted that the umpires should maintain a friendly attitude towards the players by shedding their high-handed attitude Warne also expressed his view repetitively that fifty over match should be withdrawn once for all as if such a change is brought about it would enable the players to spend more time with their families and relieve them from