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International Debutant
With the recent retirement of Brett Lee, Michael Hussey is the only player left from our 'great' era (not sure whether to count Michael Clarke in that club). Was a good time for Lee to abandon ship, the team was going to hell.
I always use the analogy of millionaires. In the setup of international cricket over the past 5 years, the top 4-6 teams have been 'millionaires' in terms of player talent, domestic system and amount of money and resources poured into them. Unlike the other teams which have invested their millions wisely into safe and stable returns and hence produced a decent return in most situations, the Australian cricket team have spent their fortune here and there in get-rich-quick and other scams which have all but wiped out our bank balance. That is to say, whilst the other teams have been picking the right players most of the time and managing them well, our selectors have destroyed all the good talent we had (and with it any chance of creating a Post McGrath/Warne/Hayden/Langer/Gilchrist era world beating team), ruining the careers of many including Dussey, Katich, Bollinger, Bracken, Clark, Ferguson, Jaques, Noffke, Ronchi, Harris, et al. In addition they have idolised and worship players with phantom potential: Johnson, Cowan, North, Smith, Hastings, Manou, Krezja, Bailey, Forrest, Beer, McDonald, Laughlin (I'm sure I've missed some other damn horrible players - there were that many) not based on their proven performance, but on the selectors on grandiose fantasies that'd they become the next once in a century players we used to have. Of course just like the pyramid schemes and the Nigerian email hoax schemes we see on the internet, they all failed predictably and now the state of our cricket is akin to that of a poor, blind, and homeless beggar with nobody to blame but himself.
Oh how the mighty have fallen!
I always use the analogy of millionaires. In the setup of international cricket over the past 5 years, the top 4-6 teams have been 'millionaires' in terms of player talent, domestic system and amount of money and resources poured into them. Unlike the other teams which have invested their millions wisely into safe and stable returns and hence produced a decent return in most situations, the Australian cricket team have spent their fortune here and there in get-rich-quick and other scams which have all but wiped out our bank balance. That is to say, whilst the other teams have been picking the right players most of the time and managing them well, our selectors have destroyed all the good talent we had (and with it any chance of creating a Post McGrath/Warne/Hayden/Langer/Gilchrist era world beating team), ruining the careers of many including Dussey, Katich, Bollinger, Bracken, Clark, Ferguson, Jaques, Noffke, Ronchi, Harris, et al. In addition they have idolised and worship players with phantom potential: Johnson, Cowan, North, Smith, Hastings, Manou, Krezja, Bailey, Forrest, Beer, McDonald, Laughlin (I'm sure I've missed some other damn horrible players - there were that many) not based on their proven performance, but on the selectors on grandiose fantasies that'd they become the next once in a century players we used to have. Of course just like the pyramid schemes and the Nigerian email hoax schemes we see on the internet, they all failed predictably and now the state of our cricket is akin to that of a poor, blind, and homeless beggar with nobody to blame but himself.
Oh how the mighty have fallen!
