Best Before....

[hang on]

OR past the sell by date OR perfectly matured.

A discussion on another thread (about Rashid and the right time to chuck him into the deep end) prompted this one. Thought it would be interesting to discuss the following:

1) The best time to blood youngsters (the Pakistanis do it soonest, while the English and the Australians do it latest)
2) The best way to do it -- a little bit of experience and a lot of talent or enough talent and a lot of annealing in the domestic set up
3) The difference for batsmen v. bowlers in terms of being baptized by fire, as it were.
4) Exceptional cases either way i.e. those who have done well and those who have clearly been traumatized
5) Teams that lost out on a generation of players as a result of national team strength and waiting too long (the Windies and Australia and the Indian middle order, for example)
6) Etc.

Personal anecdotes encouraged!

 

[Howe_zat]

I'd say it depends a lot more on how much first-class cricket they've played rather than what age they are. Their age just tells you how much time they might have left and/or how much they can improve. So you can either see a young cricketer as someone with lots of time to improve before or after getting picked.

 

[hang on]

what also interests me is the way certain coaches take a punt on talent that might otherwise have been unfulfilled in the routine humdrum (for some) of domestic cricket - vaughan, for example. spotting talent in terms of technique or strokeplay or the intricacies of swing is all very well and good, but how does one go about identifying mental strength? and what it might take to help super talent to move onto the next plane -- for example, what would it have taken to provide ramps with whatever would have helped him fulfill his obvious potential. ditto hicks.

 

[Borges]

As early as possible. I think for a young batsman with great promise, as soon as he has about 25 FC games under his belt. For a bowler though, I would wait longer; a minimum of 50 or so FC games.

 

[marc71178]

It's got to be a case by case scenario.

In the case of Rashid there isn't really a spot in the team he can take as his bowling is nowhere near good enough to replace Swann or one of the seamers and his batting is not strong enough to play him as a top 6 bat.

There may be a possible argument that if none of the candidates to replace Colly fire that you move Prior to 6 and bat Rashid 7, but that's not a situation I'd want just yet.

 

[zaremba]

This sort of subject always puts me in mind of two players picked at 21 for England, David Gower and Gentle Mark Lathwell. One looked (and was) a Test cricketer from day one, the other was clearly not ready. Mind you I'm not sure he would ever have been ready.

 

[keeper]

Well, if you're good enough you're old enough ought to be the rule, but of course it's more complex than that.

Some players definitely step up and find the stimulus of international cricket allows them to play up to, or beyond, their usual standard at a lower level. Others are the reverse or else fundamental technical flaws are exposed in a way they weren't at the lower level.

The team have to balance the risk of it going wrong and the risk is far greater normally if the debutant is a fourth bowler than a sixth batsman.

Situation and opposition counts. Being thrown in against the highest quality as a desperate measure when the team have been slaughtered very rarely works well. I can think of a couple of occasions when Englishmen have debuted abroad at short notice and done well. Less time to think about it and less public exposure? Don't know if there is any sort of trend there or not.

I reckon Englishmen mature late and when I looked at this in more detail a few years back concluded that 24 was the optimal age for an English debutant.

Very, very tough call in all but the rarest of cases which is why being a selector is so tough and one of the reasons why they tend to favour consistency of selection nowadays.

 

[fredfertang]

The tragic Ben Hollioake debuted at 19 but played just two Tests - I always thought he had the talent and the temperament but could never quite get them in synch - had he done so its a sobering thought that it might have been him and not Andrew Strauss leading England to the Ashes - he'd only be 33

 

[Jacknife]

Unless a 18 or 19 year old is pulling up trees in CC and looks a class a part, there's no need to rush them to international cricket.
All players mature at different ages and depending whether they bowl or bat, it takes different amounts of time before they know their game. Whichever way you answer, there is going to be exceptions to the rule.
It also depends what environment the player is coming into, if it's a successful team you could introduce a young talented player, if it's not, it wouldn't be the best place to introduce a young guy.
At the end of the day, as others have said, it's a case by case scenario and I don't think one general rule will work for all.

 

[TumTum]

It depends on the players available for selection. If a country has many good domestic talents, the most experienced will be selected. If it doesn't, selecting young talents and letting them develop at Test level might be better. However the former is always better, unless that young talent is truly exceptional.

 

[salman85]

Depends on the strength of your domestic circuit IMO.Countries with poor domestic circuits like Pakistan are more likely to throw in younger players in the international arena if they show potential,whereas teams with stronger domestic circuits like Australia are likely to wait till the potential is balanced with performance before they are thrown in the international arena.

It's no rule of thumb obviously and it varies from case to case as it has been pointed out in this thread,but the strength of a domestic circuit has a strong bearing on the whole thing.

 

[keeper]

One theory about Graeme Hick was that he spent too long in county cricket before playing Tests. Too long without being stretched and having technical flaws exposed.

Always easy to assume that a player who fails after being selected at a particular time would have succeeded if selected at another time - and vice-versa.

Continual re-selection and dropping is probably a bigger indicator of success vs failure than when first selected.

 

[hang on]

that - the absence of a stable dressing room/squad/environment - is often used to explain ramps's baffling non performance. though, i do think that he had seemed to have got his act together (about bloody time, too!) when he was dropped for good by hussein and fletcher.

 

[smash84]

Has to be on a case to case basis I think.