Do you realise it's pretty condescending to reduce my argument to "you liked them" when I haven't even said that?
But I'll run with it and assume you're against it because you didn't like them, I guess.
Your attitude is extremely transparent. And I said '
essentially', that is, it is based on a personal judgement of worthiness which can be summed up in the phrase I used. Perhaps it was the wrong phrase, but 'you want them to be' is tautological. I've not seen most of the matches for quite obvious reasons, so I cannot make the judgement on whether I would have like watching them. I find cricket of that era more interesting than today's, so I reckon I would have, regardless of the administrative issues. Besides, the rightness or wrongness of those issues does not decide first-class status.
This is patently ridiculous. The Australian team, playing World Series Cricket Supertests during the WSC era was CLEARLY the elite Australian test team of that time. AB DeVilliers (an autonomous individual) choosing not to play for SA in no way correlates with a whole XI of the best cricketers in a nation choosing to play a different comp because of the corruption in the system of the traditional comp worldwide.
Perceptions of corruption don't determine first class status. And you say it is 'patently ridiculous', but it is merely extending your own logic. What if one player out of the official eleven
was in the elite. Or two. Or three. Where do you draw the line? Six (i.e. half a team) of Australia's best (or better) players refused to tour in 1912—should that series no longer be considered a proper test series? Jeff Thomson played the 77/78 season in the official system (ironically due to a sponsorship contract preventing him from going Packer). Rodney Hogg took 41 wickets against England in 78/79. Allan Border made his debut for the offical side and averaged 49 at the end of the split. Furthermore, cricket did not just end with Aus or W.I. (or Pakistan, which also had a large number of defections, although they managed to accomodate some of them in official tours as well). England made good its losses, and India and NZ were unaffected (Hadlee's WSC matches were with the permission of the NZCC). What if Packer had only managed to sign up Australian players?
You can bang on as long as you like about governing bodies or defend those in power, but the opinion of anyone with a brain is that WSC supertests were clearly a touger comp than the tests at that time, and the WSC XI was clearly better than the Australian test XI of that time. If you don't wanna add the stats to test or FC stats because "tradition" or whatever, I don't care. I personally would, and I'd acknowledge how good the cricket was in those supertests.
Correctness of arguments does not depend on positions of power. That is the logic deployed by those who want to cover over holes and contradictions in their own thought (but that's a topic much larger than cricket). And I've not defended the ACB's policy towards paying players anyway, I've said that it is irrelevant to considering matches first-class.
Obviously, the opinion of anyone with a brain is that Aus vs. Aus A was tougher than any other paring in whatever OD series that was, so those matches should be given ODI status or something (and in case you forgot, they don't have it). 'How good the cricket was' doesn't matter ultimately, otherwise many tests involving the weaker sides of the twenty-first century would go and scratch sides, unoffical tours, rebel tours, domestic/tour matches, etc. would come in if the logic is to be applied fully rather than in a manner just get in the ones you want.
If you want to acknowledge how good the cricket was, you can say, 'the cricket was really good,' as you indeed do.
