Making selection fully statistical wouldn't work because there are so many things that selectors would considered before selecting a player.
- playing conditions in different countries differ hence a player who does well under one condition wouldn't necessarily do well in other conditions.
- other things would be to see if the player would fit in the team environment, so stuff like players attitude and his dedication towards the team and the how long would the player be able to play, his fitness level.
I feel selectors should use statistical as well as subjective approach
These are minimal restrictions. This would still mean that the statistics would be used to select the vast majority (i.e. no problem with attitude or fitness) of domestic players in home matches. If only your criteria were held; then we would see a disparity in home and away teams, which I think would be a key aspect of a statistical approach, distinct from an intuition based approach.
The thing is that the way human brain thinks of a situation (common sense, or whatever we call it) follow an algorithm. Whenever a selection panel discussion happens, it follows an algorithm. It takes various inputs - age, test record, FC record, form in the last year or so, record in a certain situation or against a specific opposition - process through some if but only if for and other loops - and come up with the squad. However, it is more tricky than that. There are a few things which are in selectors' minds but possibly are very very difficult to be put in the form of an algorithm. Wicketkeeping skills, fielding skills, captaincy, political considerations (Ganguly-Chappell relationship for example), balance of the side (probably this one is less tough to be made a part of the algorithm than previous ones) etc...
I think that selection panel discussions deviate far too far from a strict algorithm. Sometimes some things are not fully fleshed out, like current form. Intuitions of intelligent analysts do follow some statistical criteria, but they are not always fully fleshed out. Anomalies are not sufficiently analysed - of course, it is not sufficient to just discount teams like Bangladesh completely, but that does not mean that giving minimal thought to anomalies is acceptable either.
In short, the various inputs to the selectors minds are not all fully analyzed to see if they are fully relevant or important, or weighted as to how important they are.
Wicket keeping skills are not statistically analyzable, which is why I went for the term 'scientific' which was probably the wrong term. Of course, it is a key feature to take into account but I do not think it undermines or is particularly relevant to the question I am saying. Fielding skills is an important one but I'd say it is more of a tiebreaker than anything else. There is not a plethora of batsmen who can do very well at international level, nor bowlers and so even if fielding skills is used as a tie break for players with similar ability, it will not affect all that much. Captaincy and politics are also things that are not often salient.
I think building from Flems and Weldone's posts. If you took that team that Flem listed and then applied a "have you been tried twice before" or "were you a gimp on the single time we tried you" rule in the algorithm then it wouldn't be too bad. I don't know how the Algorithm would pick Doug Bracewell though unless it asked a question - who is a stand out performer from the Emerging players tournament.
As for the emerging players themselves they could also have an algorithm which included an age restriction.
Very good points.
The only weakness I see is that a computer can't tell if someone is playing like a gimp in a test match. It just sees the stats.
Is this important? Selectors think it is important but if a player is playing awful, are they merely in poor form or are they not up to the level of cricket. Selectors will very often go for the latter but out of form Dravid showed that a top class batsmen can look just awful at the crease despite having years of fantastic success either side of that. If a batsmen debuts with such form, should they be discounted, as a selector will largely do, or should it be overlooked totally as a period of bad form. I lean towards the latter, except in extreme cases.
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