Australian test selection 2020/21

[Smudge49]

Only reason Wade is out of the squad and Head isn't is Wade is a gun T20 player and Head is equally useless in both forms

Ben McDermott replacing Head in the test squad, Jordan Silk replacing McDermott in the T20 squad makes far better sense to me.

This fascination that Head or Carey are likely to be future captains, so let's keep throwing them into the deep end hoping they learn to swim someday is utterly stupid.

 

[Nintendo]

Why are the selectors so obsessed with carey he's a substandard keeper and averages low 30's in fc, inglis and person are both better.

 

[Smudge49]

Why are the selectors so obsessed with carey he's a substandard keeper and averages low 30's in fc, inglis and person are both better.

Because Isa Guha said he should be the captain.

 

[stephen]

The selectors didn't even consider replacing Paine as captain after a historic loss against India B in our own backyard.

What's the point of repeating the same stupidity and expecting different results?

Our batting:

Warner
Pucovski
Labuschagne
Smith
Head
Green
Paine

Backups:

Harris
Henriques
Carey

I see that there is discussion about keeping Harris at opener and dropping pucovski down to 5. Or having pucovski open and bringing in Carey. Both of which are completely absurd ideas.

The Australian think tank that decided this would be lucky to scrape together three brain cells between them. This squad has mediocrity written all over it. Where is Khawaja? Maddinson? Inglis? Why the **** is Carey within 100 miles of the red ball side? Carey is, to quote a former Australian prime minister, a low altitude flyer. He seems to be in and around the squad for no good reason.

Why the hell is Khawaja being ignored? It's like the selectors don't have a ****ing clue about the shield, don't have a ****ing clue about why Australia has failed so frequently in the last few years and don't have a ****ing clue about how to identify and nurture talent.

But mostly, why the **** does Langer still have a job. Here's some elite honesty, Langer is a cancer on the performance of the Australian side and while he is there Australia will never achieve more than complete mediocrity.

 

[Senile Sentry]

Still don't see how that would be relevant to this statistic at all, but Jadeja wouldn't be too different in that regard. Given that he's played such a high proportion of his games in spinning conditions (due to being the 2nd spinner or much of his career) he would have bowled a lot, and early, quite often as well.

On the contrary, its Ashwin who is considered as better bowler with the new ball and hence bowls early.

Also Indian quicks in the last 6 years - coinciding with the best part of Jadeja's career as a front line bowler for India - have been extremely good in India as well. Since Jan 2016, Indian pacers have averaged 23.88 at home as against 25.37 by Indian spinners.

In Murali's case, he never had another competing wicket taking bowler at the other end - except from Vaas to some.extent. and hence like Embuldeniya recently, gets a chance to have a go at everyone. Of course, it is to his credit he bore this burden manfully through a decade and half and ended up with 800 wickets.

 

[TheJediBrah]

On the contrary, its Ashwin who is considered as better bowler with the new ball and hence bowls early.

Also Indian quicks in the last 6 years - coinciding with the best part of Jadeja's career as a front line bowler for India - have been extremely good in India as well. Since Jan 2016, Indian pacers have averaged 23.88 at home as against 25.37 by Indian spinners.

In Murali's case, he never had another competing wicket taking bowler at the other end - except from Vaas to some.extent. and hence like Embuldeniya recently, gets a chance to have a go at everyone. Of course, it is to his credit he bore this burden manfully through a decade and half and ended up with 800 wickets.

Fair enough, but to reiterate "getting to have a go at everyone" isn't really relevant to this stat

 

[Nintendo]

Kh

The selectors didn't even consider replacing Paine as captain after a historic loss against India B in our own backyard.

What's the point of repeating the same stupidity and expecting different results?

Our batting:

Warner
Pucovski
Labuschagne
Smith
Head
Green
Paine

Backups:

Harris
Henriques
Carey

I see that there is discussion about keeping Harris at opener and dropping pucovski down to 5. Or having pucovski open and bringing in Carey. Both of which are completely absurd ideas.

The Australian think tank that decided this would be lucky to scrape together three brain cells between them. This squad has mediocrity written all over it. Where is Khawaja? Maddinson? Inglis? Why the **** is Carey within 100 miles of the red ball side? Carey is, to quote a former Australian prime minister, a low altitude flyer. He seems to be in and around the squad for no good reason.

Why the hell is Khawaja being ignored? It's like the selectors don't have a ****ing clue about the shield, don't have a ****ing clue about why Australia has failed so frequently in the last few years and don't have a ****ing clue about how to identify and nurture talent.

But mostly, why the **** does Langer still have a job. Here's some elite honesty, Langer is a cancer on the performance of the Australian side and while he is there Australia will never achieve more than complete mediocrity.

Khawaja has averaged 20* over a shield season n and a half after getting dropped, has done nothing to earn a recall. Sounds like you "don't have a ****ing clue about the shield" tbh.

 

[Senile Sentry]

Full squad:

Tim Paine (c), Sean Abbott, Alex Carey, Pat Cummins, Cameron Green, Marcus Harris, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Moises Henriques, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Michael Neser, James Pattinson, Will Pucovski, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Mark Steketee, Mitchell Swepson, David Warner.

9 bowlers in addition to 2 allrounders hope they actually rotate their bowlers this time around

 

[stephen]

Kh
Khawaja has averaged 20* over a shield season n and a half after getting dropped, has done nothing to earn a recall. Sounds like you "don't have a ****ing clue about the shield" tbh.

Granted Khawaja hasn't been great in the shield, but he's class, averaging 56 this season and better than players like Harris. Also, what's the excuse for not picking Maddinson in the squad?

Carey has done nothing in the shield and is what, 30 or something now? Time to move on from him and pick Inglis.

And I at least watch the shield, unlike our selectors.

 

[GotSpin]

Agree with this talent pool point you make, but then CA needs to make a choice. They need to conduct BBL with full strength squads with the Australian international calendar not clashing with it, because there is no real progress an upcoming player can make, by only mostly playing against fringe players who are more or less on his level.

Cricket Australia is the only cricket board around the world stupid enough to dilute their own marque event, by keeping their big name players occupied with international cricket at the same time of that event.

This is gluttonous behavior on part of Cricket Australia who want to shove as much cricket as possible into the summer, without worrying about it's ramifications and outcomes on overall health of Australian cricket.

The current state of affairs literally ensures that only a test cricketer misses a good chunk of the BBL, it might not be a problem for big names like Warner, Smith or Cummins but for a young player missing a whole season of BBL to carry drinks for the Australian test side might not be a great deal.

It is arguably why no batsman with a FC average north of 40, don't really much play BBL to begin with.

lol being gluttonous

How exactly are CA supposed to schedule both the international and domestic scene if not during the peak summer months?

 

[GoodAreasShane]

Granted Khawaja hasn't been great in the shield, but he's class, averaging 56 this season and better than players like Harris. Also, what's the excuse for not picking Maddinson in the squad?

Carey has done nothing in the shield and is what, 30 or something now? Time to move on from him and pick Inglis.

And I at least watch the shield, unlike our selectors.

Carey and Inglis actually have very similar Shield records with the bat, so to use that as justifucation is somewhat tenuous. Inglis is the marginally better gloveman imo, but on balance it isn't exactly clear cut either way.

And if you are looking for stable solidity, Maddinson seems an odd choice, even though he is talented

 

[TheJediBrah]

Carey and Inglis actually have very similar Shield records with the bat, so to use that as justifucation is somewhat tenuous. Inglis is the marginally better gloveman imo, but on balance it isn't exactly clear cut either way.

And if you are looking for stable solidity, Maddinson seems an odd choice, even though he is talented

Inglis has only just begun looking a proper prospect this year though. Not saying I would pick him over Carey but comparing their career Shield records isn't a perfect deciding factor.

 

[stephen]

Carey and Inglis actually have very similar Shield records with the bat, so to use that as justifucation is somewhat tenuous. Inglis is the marginally better gloveman imo, but on balance it isn't exactly clear cut either way.

And if you are looking for stable solidity, Maddinson seems an odd choice, even though he is talented

I'm not looking for stability, I'm looking for someone who can score some runs.

 

[Dan]

Also, what's the excuse for not picking Maddinson in the squad?

Runs at the MCG don't count, although selectors only seem to actually apply this logic to Maddinson tbf

 

[stephen]

Runs at the MCG don't count, although selectors only seem to actually apply this logic to Maddinson tbf

And Maxwell.

 

[Pup Clarke]

Interesting. Was thinking Steketee might be a bolter for this tour

Impression on whether he can step up to test match cricket? Very very unlikely to play obvs

 

[Starfighter]

No

 

[Prince EWS]

Interesting. Was thinking Steketee might be a bolter for this tour

Impression on whether he can step up to test match cricket? Very very unlikely to play obvs

The drop down in class from Pattinson/Neser/Bird/Green to Steketee was really noticeable in the Australia A game. Admittedly I didn't watch the second dig in which Steketee took five*, but he didn't look in the same league as the others in the first innings. Given how ordinary Green, who I think is the better bowler, has looked at Test level so far I'm not very optomistic, although I think Paine would probably use Steketee less poorly.

I'm surprised he was picked ahead of Bird; maybe it's just an age thing given he's unlikely to actually play.

*Four were tailenders and then India declared, so I'm not reading much into it.

 

[Smudge49]

Granted Khawaja hasn't been great in the shield, but he's class, averaging 56 this season and better than players like Harris. Also, what's the excuse for not picking Maddinson in the squad?

Carey has done nothing in the shield and is what, 30 or something now? Time to move on from him and pick Inglis.

And I at least watch the shield, unlike our selectors.

Khawaja isn't going to play for Australia ever again, I think he knows it and probably been told this in no uncertain terms. Pretty hard to motivate yourself in that scenario.

Also given the current batting stocks, he is quite comfortably among the six best batsmen in Australia, if he was really on the selectors radar his Sheild record won't/shouldn't have mattered much.

Carey and Inglis actually have very similar Shield records with the bat, so to use that as justifucation is somewhat tenuous. Inglis is the marginally better gloveman imo, but on balance it isn't exactly clear cut either way.

And if you are looking for stable solidity, Maddinson seems an odd choice, even though he is talented

TBH something catastrophic would need to happen for Carey to get a game in South Africa, but the fact Carey is the second choice keeper despite a stagnant white ball career (despite being given all sort of opportunities the likes of which no other recent Australian cricketer has received ) sends pretty bad signals to all the domestic players across Australia.

At 30-31 not only is he not a long term option, being a wicket keeper his keeping isn't that great either, he misses couple of catches or stumpings standing upto Zampa pretty much every series.

Long term keeper for Australia for me is Phillipe, hearing he would move states for better red ball opportunities and from there his talent should help him leave the rest of the contenders behind.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Sure but Phillipe is a poor keeper even in T20s. He'd have to have an insane improvement over the next few years to be a viable Test keeper.